Ranchi, May 7: Jharkhand’s saga of grounded choppers continues with the one bought by the state for its police force lying at a hangar in Bangalore with manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd refusing to take up maintenance work. That’s because HAL’s maintenance contract with the government has expired as of February 2011, and HAL has been plagued by problems of its own, including a manpower crunch. Meanwhile, the security forces continue to suffer whenever there is a need to evacuate the injured as was the case in Lohardaga on Tuesday when as many as 11 personnel lost there lives with the DGP, no less, noting that at least six of them could have been saved if a BSF chopper — one of two sent by the Centre to help out in Operation Greenhunt — reached the forest on time (see chart). But, the state police has been without a chopper of its own since January as the lone Dhruv, bought for Rs 45 crore using police modernisation funds in 2007, was lying at HAL’s Bangalore headquarters.
According to highly placed state government sources, HAL was not interested in continuing with the maintenance work of the 2+11 seater (two pilots, 11 others) armoured chopper meant exclusively for police search and rescue efforts during anti-rebel operations. The maintenance contract with HAL expired in February, a month after the chopper was sent to Bangalore for a scheduled 500-hour inspection maintenance, a statutory requirement. But the sources insisted that the inspection should not have taken more then a fortnight to complete. State home secretary J.B. Tubid admitted that scheduled maintenance could not be carried out as the service contract had expired. “HAL has expressed its inability to continue with maintenance work citing problems of manpower despite us having requested it to extend the maintenance agreement for the next couple of years,” he said. No other agency had so far been engaged to maintain the chopper, but Tubid promised to sort out the issue within a fortnight. Ever since the purchase of the HAL-made Dhruv, the state government has been spending around Rs 20 lakh per month for maintenance. It has also hired two pilots, spending Rs 10 lakh on their monthly salaries, but they are now idling. Ever since its purchase in 2007, the police chopper has been in the limelight for the wrong reasons. Meant for exclusive use of the police force, it ended up flying VIPs and their relatives regularly, forcing a Good Samaritan to file a PIL in Jharkhand High Court in 2008. More than two years later, it is still a high-profile case. During 21 months of Madhu Koda’s tenure as chief minister the helicopter had made 352 flights, costing the state exchequer Rs 9.47 crore. Passenger logs were not maintained and in the rare cases when they were, fictitious names were used to protect the high and mighty. It was only after a rap from the court last year, that the state civil aviation department handed over Dhruv’s operations to the state police. But the craft has remained grounded at the hangar at Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi. To ensure that VIPs like the chief minister, senior ministers and officials, don’t encounter travel issues, the state civil aviation department has hired an Italian made Augusta helicopter on wet lease. “Augusta has been providing its services for the last two-three months. The state pays around Rs 80,000 for an hour of flying,” said a civil aviation department source. | 
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