Umamageswari Maruthappan
Chief Justice of India, S. A. Bobde fretted about the horrors of the air crash that India had witnessed and sought a response from the Centre in this regard. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati is representing the Centre in this case.
“A crash is something horrible. People are trapped inside the flight. Even the site of a crash is horrible,” the Apex Court Bench anguished.
The Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed by 85-year old Rajen Mehta who, through his plea, demanded installations of the Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) in all risk-prone airports in India.
The petition filed by the Delhi-based man had revealed the advantages of installing EMAS in the airport and specified that had the system been installed on time, it could have possibly prevented the deadliest air crash in Mangalore and recently in Kozhikode.
“The existence of EMAS was brought to the knowledge of the Air Authority of India (AAI) and the respondents [the DGCA and the Civil Aviation Ministry] in 2008. However, for no plausible reason, it has not been installed to date. During this time, the aviation industry has seen two horrific incidents at Mangalore and Calicut [Kozhikode] causing loss of hundreds of lives, which could have been saved by the timely action of the respondents,” the plea stated pointing out the indolence of the authorities concerned.
“The Court of Inquiry, appointed to investigate into the Mangaluru crash, had specifically recommended that systems like the EMAS should be installed on the runway overshoot areas, especially for table-top airports… Despite the same, no action was taken by the respondents,” it added.
The August 2020 air crash in Kozhikode, Kerala that killed around 18 people had shook the entire nation and since then queries regarding maintenance of airports and flights are on a rise. The heart-wrenching accident is said to be the worst in 10 decades. The 2010 Mangalore plane crash was the deadliest which claimed almost 158 lives.
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