Lalu’s son enrolls at Bihar Flying Institute

Patna: RJD leader Lalu Prasad’s elder son Tej Pratap  has enrolled with Bihar Flying Institute in Patna for a course that would fetch him a commercial pilot licence.
The 20-year-old strapping lad is one of seven candidates chosen for the course. The selection was made on the basis of an interview conducted by a board that has the principal cabinet secretary as its chairman. The other members are the director and chief engineer of the state civil aviation department and the chief flight instructor and assistant flight instructor of the institute.
The interview was conducted on July 12 and the results were declared just a few days ago. A total of 12 candidates had appeared for the interview.
Officials in the state civil aviation department claim the selection was made purely on the basis of merit.
The selection of candidates has been made for paid seats of the institute and those admitted to it would have to pay Rs 3,720 for each hour of flying. For obtaining a licence, a candidate has to fly 200 hours. Tej, like the other trainees, would have to fork out a little over Rs 7 lakh in the next three years, the normal time taken for completing the course.
The minimum qualification is Plus-2 with maths and physics and a minimum age of 18.
Prior to his brush with flying in the institute’s Cessna 172R training aircraft, Tej will have to obtain a student pilot licence, which is issued after an oral test in four different subjects, for which the trainees are prepared through ground classes. A medical test is also conducted.
“Gyan Prakash, son of Bihar Assembly Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary, too had enrolled with the institute and finished his course in March this year,” a source in the institute said. BJP leader Rajeev Pratap Rudy too is a product of the  flying school. Durba Banerjee, the first Indian woman piloting a commercial flight, was a student of the institute.
28/07/10 Sanjeev Kumar Verma/The Telegraph