The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has selected 42 candidates for appointment as Assistant Directors (AD) of operations in the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in a large scale recruitment in four years, people familiar with the matter said, adding that the candidates will start working by the end of November.
The appointments are expected to strengthen India’s aviation safety oversight, and come months after Hindustan Times reported DGCA’s staffing crunch on 19 July. On July 21, civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu told Parliament that DGCA would recruit 190 people by the end of October.
The recommendations were made against 51 advertised vacancies, according to the final list published by the UPSC on October 15.
According to documents reviewed by HT, until June this year, 48% of DGCA’s 1,063 technical posts were vacant. The vacancies included 400 posts sanctioned and added in 2022 . Some of the vacancies were in key areas: for instance, there were six posts of deputy director general vacant in the airworthiness section, six more in operations, and two in air safety.
The people cited in the first instance said the new appointments are expected to significantly augment DGCA’s technical strength, particularly at a time when air traffic movements and fleet sizes are expanding rapidly.
“This large scale recruitment in four years will help ease operational pressure,” said a ministry official who asked not to be named.
The ADs will be placed in “ all technical departments barring the department of airworthiness, thus proving to be a major relief to the short staffed DGCA,” a second government official said, also asking not to be named.
A third official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the appointments were “the first of many coming” and claimed “around 150 appointments are likely in November”.
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