Justice R C Lahoti probed into the mid-air collision between a Kazakhstan Il-76 aircraft and a Saudia Boeing 747 over Charkhi Dadri in Haryana, 64 km west of New Delhi on November 12, 1996. The report on `the third worst aviation tragedy in the world' was submitted to the government in July last year. Ever since it is gathering dust.

Except for the recommendation on the separation of the Air Traffic System (ATS) routes into unidirectional arrival and departure corridors within the limits of Delhi, all other recommendations in the 174-page report were ignored.

According to aviation experts, unidirectional arrival and departure corridors became unavoidable as airlines mushroomed following the open skies policy since early 1990s. ``This brought about atremendous increase in air traffic, but the simultaneous upgradation of the ATC infrastructure in the country has not been carried out,'' aviation experts feel.

Justice Lahoti had also called for integration of civil and military ATCs and achieving a uniform standard for control by introducing the scheme of licencing for controllers and making it applicable to military too.

He also suggested that Airports Authority of India (AAI) should have a member ATC on its board to look after ATC matters and regional and field ATC units should be placed under unified command of ATC cadre. The AAI has so far ignored this demand.

``Unfortunately in our country, the importance of the specialised nature of work done by ATCs is being ignored. The International Air Transporters' Association (IATA) has predicted substantial increase in air traffic in the next 20 years with the role played by ATC becoming even more significant,'' said regional secretary of the ATC Guild, P N Bahuguna.

India needs to achieve a traffichandling capacity of over 80 movements per hour (the current rate at the Heathrow airport in London) as against New Delhi's 12-15 movements and Mumbai's 20-25 movements per hour. These are likely to go up to about 30-35 even after commissioning of Raytheon system, which has been hanging fire at both Mumbai and Delhi for the last two years.

Justice Lahoti's will only be the latest in a series of inquiries conducted and the report quietly lost among the files. Earlier, a committee set up to draft a new aviation policy and headed by Air Marshal J K Seth (retd.), had recommended licensing of ATCs, whose services at present are utilised as unlicensed state employees under the DGCA. ``Notwithstanding the AAI training and system for assessments and ratings of ATCs as per the ICAO guidelines, there is a need to upgrade the performance standards of ATCs,'' the committee had reported last year.

Besides Air Marshal Seth, the other members of the panel included the DGCA H S Khola, former AAI chairman RanjanChatterjee, and Indian Airlines Chairman and Managing Director P C Sen.

The Sheth panel had also recommended the restructuring of the DGCA into a new body to be named the Civil Aviation Authority, to infuse a sense of professionalism and cut the red-tapism in functioning of the DGCA.This transformation of the DGCA was first recommended by a committee headed by Air Marshal C K S Raje in 1985.

The report gathered dust and instead, the government truncated the DGCA by taking away 85 per cent of its manpower and physical assets, to form the National Airports Authority. As a result, the DGCA was left in a poor shape sustaining itself only on budgetary grants from the central government.