Maha guv denied nod to travel in state plane
MUMBAI: Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari was scheduled to travel by a state government aircraft to Dehradun in Uttarakhand on Thursday, but the permission to use the plane was not granted even as the governor had boarded the aircraft, sources said.
The governor later took a commercial flight to travel to Dehradun, a statement from the Raj Bhavan said.
This comes amid uneasy ties between the state’s Shiv Senancp-congress coalition government and the governor, with both the sides have being critical of each other in the past.
The Raj Bhavan statement said the governor’s secretariat had written to the government authorities seeking permission for the use of aircraft “well in advance” on February 2.The CM’S office was also informed about it, the statement said.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Thursday said the Maharashtra government has followed all the laid-down norms in disallowing governor Bhagat Singh
Koshyari to use a state plane for his visit to Dehradun.
Rejecting the BJP’S charge that the government has insulted the governor, Raut told reporters in Delhi that there was no politics involved in the incident. “We respect the governor. The government has upheld the Constitution...this is what I gather from my conversation with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray,” he said.
“If the governor wants to use the government plane for private work, then there are some rules and had the government violated those rules, it would have been in the dock,” the Sena MP said.
However, the opposition BJP in Maharashtra accused the state government of being “egoistic” and indulging in “childish acts”, and demanded an apology from the Shiv Sena- led dispensation over this.
According to the Raj Bhavan statement, Koshyari is scheduled to preside over valedictory function of the 122nd Induction Training Programme of IAS officers at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie in Uttarakhand on Friday. He was scheduled to depart from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport for Dehradun at 10 am on Thursday, the statement said. “Today, on 11th February 2021, the Honble Governor reached the CSIM Airport at 1000 hrs and boarded the government plane. However, the Honble Governor was informed that the permission for the use of Government Aircraft had not been received,” it said.