Air India Disinvestment: Nitin Gadkari Out,Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal And Hardeep Singh Puri Part of Panel.

A new panel has been formed to work on Air India’s disinvestment plan. According to government sources, and as mentioned in an ANI update, there will be four ministers now in the panel, which will work for the sale of Air India. The names are-Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Hardeep Singh Puri and Amit Shah.

Reportedly, Nitin Gadkari’s name has been dropped from the panel and he is no longer part of the existing group. A formal notification is expected to be issued shortly in this matter.

According to reports, a panel named Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM) was first constituted on June 2017, and it was headed by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The government had earlier invited bids from investors in 2018 to buy out the government’s 76 per cent stake in Air India along with management control. The process failed because investors didn’t give their bids.

After the Civil Aviation Ministry told Air India on May 6 to be ready with all the 2018-19 financials for itself and its subsidiaries by end of June as the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has decided to speed up the disinvestment process of three of its wings. The airline constituted a nodal cell at its headquarters in New Delhi to facilitate interaction between various advisors, to assist the airline in its disinvestment process.