Air India CMD Pradeep Singh Kharola appointed Civil Aviation secretary

Air India chief Pradeep Singh Kharola has been appointed the Civil Aviation secretary in a minor bureaucratic reshuffle on Wednesday. The vacancy had come up due to the superannuation of Rajiv Nayan Choubey on January 31, who took over as a member of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). Sailesh, the secretary department of official language has been appointed the secretary ministry of minority affairs. He will also continue to hold the post of the secretary department of official Language on an additional basis. 

Who is  Pradeep Singh Kharola?

Kharola, a 1985 batch IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre, was in November 2017 named the chairman and managing director of Air India. 

Pradeep Singh Kharola hails from Dehradun, Uttarakhand. He was born on September 15, 1961.

In 2015, Pradeep Singh Kharola was given additional charge of the post of additional chief secretary to tourism department, government of Karnataka. Kharola, a 1985-batch IAS officer, held the post of the chairman of Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation in 2013.

Kharola was managing director of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation when it was formed in 1997. He was also the managing director of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation. He was on Central deputation between 2001 and 2009 and on his return, he held, among others, the post of Principal Secretary to Chief Minister (Jagadish Shettar).

In 2008, Kharola wrote the article for Economic and Political Weekly, titled Urban Public Transport Systems: Are the Taxation Policies Congenial for Their Survival and Growth? This article analyses the different levies on the operation of buses in a city and also attempted to compare these in different states in the country.