MP Jindal has a narrow escape, plane lands with deflated tyre

Guwahati, Nov 11 (IANS) Industrialist and Congress MP Navin Jindal escaped narrowly Tuesday after his personal six-seater aircraft landed with a deflated tyre at the Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Borjhar in Assam's main city of Guwahati.

An airport spokesperson said the Cessna Citation aircraft owned by the Jindal Group of Industries and flying from New Delhi to Guwahati landed with a deflated tyre caused by hydraulic brake failure.

'There was no injury to anyone with the plane carrying two passengers and two pilots. Navin Jindal was in the aircraft,' S.C. Sharma, executive director of the Airport Authority of India in Guwahati, told IANS.

Navin Jindal is the Congress MP from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat in Haryana. His mother, Savitri Jindal, is a minister of state in the Haryana government.

Airport officials took about three hours to clear the runway with at least three flights forced to change their route.

'A flight from Imphal to Delhi via Guwahati flew directly to Delhi, while another flight from Kolkata to Guwahati was sent back to Kolkata,' said Sharma.

All the passengers were accommodated in alternative flights to reach their destinations.

Passengers were angry over the long delay in clearing the runway.

'I had to miss my flight to Aizawl and we need to find out why there was so much of delay in clearing the runway,' said Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers and Mines Bijoy Krishna Handique.

Details about Jindal's visit to Guwahati were not immediately known.

Navin Jindal's industrialist father, O.P. Jindal, was killed in an air crash when his private helicopter crashed in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh while flying from Chandigarh to Delhi March 31, 2005.

Billionaire industrialist O.P. Jindal, who was a cabinet minister that time in the month-old Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana, was killed along with cabinet colleague Surender Singh in the crash.

Surender Singh, son of former Haryana chief minister and former union defence minister Bansi Lal, was agriculture minister in the Hooda government.

The chopper crashed after developing a snag.