Ashwani Lohani appointed CMD of Air India
orbiting the Earth with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 168 km and an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 35,939 km with an orbital inclination of 20.01 degrees with respect to the equator. Soon after its injection into GTO, the two solar arrays of GSAT6 were automatically deployed and the Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka took control of GSAT-6 shortly after it entered its orbit.
IAF marks 50th anniversary
of 1965 air war
The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved Ashwani Lohani as Chairman and Managing Director of Air India. A 1980 batch officer of the Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, he is the first nonIAS officer to head Air India, succeeding Rohit Nandan.
As CMD, Lohani faces the challenge of sustaining Air India, which has consistently struggled to turn a profit and has required repeated capital infusions from the central government. Lohani’s success and administrative experience as Chief Administrative Officer at the Indian Railways Organisation for Alternate Fuels Division, as Chief Mechanical Engineer at Northern Railways, and as former head of the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation have earned him the sobriquet ‘Mr Turnaround’ and his selection to head Air India is clearly intended to benefit from this.
Lt Gen MMS Rai is VCOAS
Lt Gen MMS Rai took over as Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS) from Lt Gen Philip Campose on 1 August 2015. Lt Gen MMS Rai was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers (Bombay Sappers) on 15 December 1976 and joined an Armoured Engineer Regiment. He is a third generation officer in the Indian Army and has held varied staff and instructional appointments and attended various prestigious Army courses including the Defence Services Staff College Course at Wellington and Higher Command Course at Mhow. He has commanded an Armoured Engineer Regiment, a Mountain Brigade in the North East, a Counter Insurgency Force in the most volatile and highly militancy-infested region of J&K and a Desert Corps.