By IANS
New Delhi : The planned mega merger of national carrier Air India and domestic airlines Indian was a "conspiracy" of the government, former civil Aviation minister Shahnawaz Hussain said here Wednesday.
He was speaking at a function to mark to the 55th nationalisation day of Air Corporation Employees Unions (ACEU).
Hussain, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bhagalpur, questioned the government's decision to change Indian airlines logo.
"If they had plans to merge the two airlines, then why did they change the logo? By what authority did they do so? They did not even discuss it in parliament.
"It is only because they want to remove the identity of Indian. They just want to promote private airlines and want only players like Jet Airways and Kingfisher to remain in the business," he alleged.
He also asked the employees of Indian to thwart the merger plans.
Hussain said nobody after him had become a cabinet minister for civil aviation and urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give a cabinet rank to Praful Patel.
He also criticised the Communist parties for failing to prevent the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from privatising the Delhi and Mumbai airports.