Suresh Chandra Rajeev Gets Additional Charge of CVO at Airports Authority of India

Suresh Chandra Rajeev, a 1997-batch Indian Trade Service officer serving as Chief Vigilance Officer of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, has been given additional charge of Chief Vigilance Officer at the Airports Authority of India in Delhi. The additional charge runs up to April 2, 2027.

A Chief Vigilance Officer heads the vigilance unit of an organisation and reports functionally to the Central Vigilance Commission while working within the organisation on administrative matters. The role covers preventive vigilance through system checks on tenders and contracts, investigation of complaints against employees, and processing of disciplinary proceedings. CVOs in central public sector undertakings are appointed by the Centre in consultation with the Commission, and are deliberately drawn from outside the organisation to keep the office independent of the management it examines. CVO tenures are fixed, usually at three years extendable to five, and the Commission is consulted before an officer is appointed, extended or prematurely repatriated. The office also handles the annual vigilance clearance that is required before an employee is promoted or considered for deputation.

Rajeev belongs to the Indian Trade Service, the cadre attached to the Directorate General of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. ITrS officers handle export and import policy, licensing, and the administration of trade promotion schemes. Officers of the service are posted as CVOs in central organisations under the Centre's practice of rotating vigilance heads across departments and sectors. He has been holding the vigilance charge of the civil aviation regulator and the security regulator together. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade, where the service is based, itself handles licensing decisions of substantial commercial value, which gives its officers familiarity with the kind of discretion that vigilance work examines. Officers of the service have held CVO charge in transport, power and infrastructure organisations.

His existing charge covers the DGCA, which certifies aircraft, licenses pilots and engineers and oversees airline safety oversight, and BCAS, which frames civil aviation security standards for airports and airlines. Both are regulatory bodies where vigilance work centres on licensing, inspection and certification decisions rather than on large procurement.

The Airports Authority of India is a different kind of organisation. It owns and runs more than 130 airports, provides air navigation services across Indian airspace, and awards construction and equipment contracts running into thousands of crores. Vigilance work at AAI is dominated by procurement and works contracts, land matters at airport sites, and the concession arrangements at airports operated through public-private partnership. Additional charge arrangements are commonly used when a CVO post falls vacant and a regular appointment is pending. The Commission has directed that CVO posts in major public sector undertakings not be left vacant, and additional charge is the mechanism used where a regular selection is pending. The arrangement carries a defined end date, which in this case is fixed as April 2, 2027.

AAI is in the middle of a capital expenditure programme covering terminal expansion at Guwahati, Lucknow, Agartala and other cities, the development of airports under the regional connectivity scheme, and the rollout of indigenous air traffic management systems. Vigilance scrutiny of contracts at this volume is handled by a departmental unit that reports to the CVO, with the Commission's Chief Technical Examiners conducting their own sample inspections. AAI also holds land at airport sites across the country, much of it acquired decades ago, and encroachment, lease and transfer matters on that land form a recurring category of complaints. The vigilance unit examines these alongside the contract cases.

The additional charge is for a period up to April 2, 2027. Rajeev continues as Chief Vigilance Officer of DGCA and BCAS alongside the AAI charge.