Pradeep Singh Kharola takes over as Air India Chairman and Managing Director

NEW DELHI: Senior bureaucrat Pradeep Singh Kharola on Monday took charge as chairman and managing director of Air India. Kharola took over from interim CMD Rajiv Bansal. The latter was holding the additional charge of Air India for over three months while being the financial advisor to the petroleum and natural gas ministry.

Kharola, a 1985-batch Karnataka-cadre officer, would be steering the national carrier at a time when the government is in the process of finalising modalities for its strategic disinvestment. Prior to this, Kharola was the managing director of Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. He has also worked in various posts in Karnataka, including as the chairman of Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation. He has also served as principal secretary to the Karnataka chief minister.

Industry experts say Kharola has a tough job at hand to change the fortunes of Air India, which has a debt burden of `50,000 crore. But, then, Kharola has a good track record. He has to his credit the revival of Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation. When Bengaluru was expanding, Kharola revived the city bus service from a loss-making entity to a profitable one in 2000.

Kharola has also been instrumental in implementing the Bengaluru Metro for the tech hub, a task which was certainly not easy considering the rocky terrain of the city, which made it expensive and time consuming to go underground.

Known to be soft-spoken, Kharola has a PhD in public transport systems from IIT-Delhi. It was under Kharola that the first phase of BMTC, spanning over 42 km, was completed. He also led a unique public private initiative of getting corporates to build stations, helping reduce costs.