CMG's crisis -- Missing maps, phone numbers

CMG's crisis -- Missing maps, phone numbers
HARISH GUPTA

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 2: The crisis Management Group (CMG) headed by Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar was itself in a crisis during the crucial one-hour period when the hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft was hovering over Amritsar after being refused permission to land at Lahore.

The CMG's Control Room at the Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan was a picture of chaos as it was filled with people who had no business to be there. The CMG did not have the maps and updated telephone numbers of Punjab government in Chandigarh, the Amritsar administration and military personnel. They had to seek those numbers from elsewhere when the crisis was peaking and they struggled hard to contact the persons concerned. The CMG had no scientific data available to confirm what the pilot was saying about the quantity of aviation fuel.

One of the senior officials present at the CMG control room said that when L K Advani reached there and wanted the map of a particular place, they had to struggle to get one. Civil Aviation Secretary Ravinder Guptarushed to get a cup of coffee for Advani while another official rushed to get biscuits.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) too goofed. Most of the inputs it gave on the identity of the hijackers and their activities at the Kathmandu airport were found to be incorrect. While IB chief Shyamal Dutta cut a sorry figure, chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), A S Daulat, was perhaps wiser as he just provided the help sought by the CMG.

The Cabinet Secretary was told about the hijacking at 5.10 pm when he was attending a meeting with a Union Minister. He left within minutes and rushed to the Control Room by 5.45 pm. The CMG, however, was not ready to handle the crisis. One of the reasons was its failure to undertake a mock exercise.

The last such mock exercise was undertaken on February 27, 1997 when Yogesh Chandra was the Civil Aviation secretary. It was discovered then that the whole machinery took more than one hour to be in place to deal with a crisis. A detailed paper was prepared after the drill toreduce this time which was, most probably, conveniently forgotten.