Govt taking inputs from IndiGo, security agencies: Aviation ministry on airline operating leased Turkish Airlines planes
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Business Standard
an hour ago
- Business Standard
Over 4,200 posts vacant in DGCA, BCAS, AAI; functioning unaffected: Govt
As many as 4,291 positions are lying vacant at aviation regulators DGCA and BCAS as well as at state-owned Airports Authority of India but the shortfall has not impacted the functioning of these organisations, the government said on Monday. Many posts were also created in recent times at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and AAI. Nearly 50 per cent or 823 sanctioned positions at DGCA are lying vacant while 441 posts, including 426 technical positions, were created between 2022 and 2024, raising the total technical posts at the regulator to 1,063, as per the official data. In 2024, 84 operational posts were created during restructuring of BCAS, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol told the Rajya Sabha. At AAI, 840 posts of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) were created recently. Details about the sanctioned posts at BCAS and AAI could not be immediately ascertained. "Keeping in view the current and future expansion of civil aviation and effective supervision, additional posts have been created in DGCA, BCAS and AAI. The shortfall has not impacted the functioning of these organisations," the minister said in a written reply. Mohol noted that all methods of recruitment are pursued vigorously in order to ensure timely and continuous availability of requisite manpower. "Out of 1,063 technical posts, 961 posts are of regular Technical Group A Officers and 102 posts are of Flight Operation Inspectors (FoIs) who are pilots and are hired on contract basis. As on June 2025, 540 technical posts are vacant in DGCA," Mohol said. According to him, the shortfall has not impacted the surveillance plans which are undertaken regularly as a part of Annual Surveillance Plan published on the website of DGCA. "The total number of sanctioned positions in DGCA as on date are 1,644, out of which 823 posts are vacant," he said. In 2025, 14 posts at DGCA and 864 positions at AAI were filled. Also, 5 posts at BCAS were filled on deputation basis. To meet requirements in the interregnum due to vacancies arising from reasons like inadequate response to advertisements, non-joining of selected candidates, persons with insufficient service in the feeder cadre for promotion, insufficient response to deputation posts, Mohol said efforts are being made to recruit persons through short-term contractual hiring. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mint
4 hours ago
- Mint
Greece Creates Marine Parks That May Revive Turkey Tensions
(Bloomberg) -- Greece will establish two national marine parks in an effort to protect ocean wildlife, a move that could potentially strain ties with neighboring Turkey. The parks will be located in the Ionian Sea and in the Southern Cyclades, an island group in the Aegean Sea, west and east of the mainland, respectively. The Greek government's pledge to create a marine park in the Aegean Sea drew pushback from Turkey last year. The two countries have historically been at odds over sea borders and economic rights in parts of the eastern Mediterranean. 'These parks will be among the largest marine protected areas in the entire Mediterranean,' Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday in a statement. They will allow the country to meet its target of 'protecting 30% of its territorial waters' by 2030, ahead of schedule, the premier added. The establishment of the two marine parks is meant to preserve ecosystems, restore balance and set a new standard for marine conservation, Mitsotakis said. 'Unilateral actions should be avoided in enclosed or semi-enclosed seas such as the Aegean and Mediterranean,' Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement in response, adding that Ankara would announce its own projects 'aimed at protecting the environment in marine areas' in the coming days. The area in the Aegean Sea hosts threatened wildlife plants and species and will cover almost 9,500 square kilometers. The park in the Ionian Sea will extend over 18,000 square kilometers and will include locations used by endangered animals like certain sea turtles. 'They will be vast sanctuaries for life beneath the waves,' Mitsotakis said, adding that 'most importantly, inside these marine zones the hugely damaging practice of bottom trawling will be banned.' (Adds Turkish statement in fifth paragraph.) More stories like this are available on
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Business Standard
14 hours ago
- Business Standard
Erdogan says support for two-state deal on ethnically split Cyprus absolute
Turkiye's president reaffirmed his full backing for a controversial peace deal that envisions the establishment of two separate states AP Nicosia Turkish Cypriots on Sunday celebrated Turkiye's military invasion of Cyprus that cleaved the island nation along ethnic lines 51 years ago. Turkiye's president reaffirmed his full backing for a controversial peace deal that envisions the establishment of two separate states. It's a proposal that the majority Greek Cypriots in the island's internationally recognised southern part reject out of hand. It would formalise Cyprus' partition and give Turkiye a permanent foothold they see as a bid for control of the entire, strategically situated country and its offshore hydrocarbon wealth. Our support for (Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar's) vision for a two-state solution is absolute, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks to a crowd during celebrations that culminated with a military parade. It was scheduled this year for the evening to avoid the worst of the scorching mid-summer's heat. It is time for the international community to come to terms with the facts on the ground, Erdogan added, urging the international community to establish diplomatic and economic relations with the breakaway state in Cyprus' northern third that Turkish Cypriots declared in 1983. Turkiye's invasion came in the immediate aftermath of a coup staged by Athens junta-backed supporters of uniting Cyprus with Greece. Currently, only Turkiye recognises the Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and maintains 35,000 troops in the north. Erdogan's renewed support for a two-state deal came just days after Tatar, the island's Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, the foreign ministers of guarantor' powers Greece and Turkiye, and Britain's minister of state for Europe gathered at UN headquarters in New York for meetings with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to end an eight-year moratorium on formal peace negotiations. The meeting achieved little in the way of a return to fully fledged negotiations as Tatar insisted on recognition for the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state as a prerequisite. The meeting did, however, achieve some progress on a number of confidence-building measures such the exchange of cultural artifacts and the setting up of an advisory committee on civil society. Guterres said he'll meet again with Tatar and Christodoulides in September and hold another wider meeting after a Turkish Cypriot leadership election in October in which Tatar is running on a two-state platform. Turkiye and the Turkish Cypriots insist a two-state deal is the only way forward because decades of UN-mediated peace talks based on a UN Security Council endorsed framework of reunifying Cyprus as a federation no longer had any meaning. That switch came after the last big push for a peace accord in the summer of 2017. It fell through on what Greek Cypriots said was a Turkish and Turkish Cypriot insistence on keeping a permanent Turkish troop presence on the island and enshrining military intervention rights for Turkiye as part of any deal. Greek Cypriots also rejected a demand for blanket veto powers for the minority Turkish Cypriots on all government decisions. In the south where Greek Cypriots commemorated the invasion with solemn memorials to the war dead, Christodoulides said the international community gives no support to a two-state deal. He said Turkiye's continuing occupation of European territory subverts its ambitions for closer European Union ties and undermines the role it wishes to play in the region.
