The Hindu : Fernandes calls meeting of Air Force officials

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 07, 2002

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Fernandes calls meeting of Air Force officials

By K. Balchand

PATNA NOV. 6. The Defence Minister, George Fernandes, has called a high-level meeting of officials of the Indian Air Force in Delhi on November 8 to take stock of the rising incidents of air crashes and to get to the root of the problem.

The meeting will be convened in the light of yesterday's crash of a Jaguar fighter plane in the residential colony of the Ambala Cantonment area which killed six persons. It will be attended by the Air Chief Marshal, senior Defence Ministry officials, pilots and technical personnel involved in the maintenance of planes.

The objective of the meeting, according to Mr. Fernandes, is to outline the reasons for the rather high incidence of accidents and to put an end to such occurrences. The pilots and the technical staff have been invited for necessary inputs and to find a solution. Stressing that the crash was an accident, Mr. Fernandes, however, told reporters during his brief stopover on his way to Samastipur that the court of enquiry would be looking into the reasons that led to the crash.

Mr. Fernandes denied that the Jaguar suffered from defects and asserted that it was the safest fighter aircraft in the Air Force. He ruled out the possibility of shifting air bases from residential areas to remote places saying that air crashes could happen anywhere and anytime. He cited the incident when a passenger plane crashed in Patna a couple of years ago.

Regarding the fight against terrorism, Mr. Fernandes said the issue would be raised at the India-ASEAN summit by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. He also made it clear that India had not and was not looking up to the U.S. in its fight against terrorism but would tackle the problem on its own. Mr. Fernandes, however, evaded a question on the decision of the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, not to implement POTA there.

He said the Centre's main concern had been to hold elections and ensure their fairness. He said that it was too early to foresee how the NDA constituents would conduct themselves vis-à-vis the Gujarat elections, but added that if the Samata Party fielded candidates, he would be campaigning for them.

`Nothing wrong about conversion law'

PTI reports:

Mr. Fernandes said there was nothing wrong about Tamil Nadu's new religious conversion legislation.

He said the Constitution envisaged that a citizen was free to follow any religion and convert to another religion voluntarily.

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