Political Diary

Serious questions are now being raised over the maintenance of the Bell 430 as none of the chopper's locators, that should start beaming its position in the event of an emergency and help rescue effort, showed any signs of life on Wednesday. The chopper had an emergency locating transmitter (ELT) that remained silent. The ELT starts emitting signals to satellites automatically in the event of a crash. Investigators were also baffled by the pilot's SOS personal recovery beacon remaining silent. Once activated in event of a forced landing due to any reason like bad weather or technical fault, this starts emitting GPS details of latitude and longitude positioning that are picked by satellites and help pinpoint the exact location. Isro's remote sensing aircraft was deployed to pick up these signals, to no avail till late Wednesday night. Even mobile phone companies were asked to try and pick up signals of cell phones being carried by the CM and his entourage. They may have not been able to pick up any signal due to poor connectivity or phones being switched off for the flight. The non-functional localisers only added to the overall anxiety over the missing chopper that was aggravated by a communication gap between an investigating DGCA team in Delhi and the Shamshabad air traffic control. When DGCA team in Delhi called the ATC to probe the missing chopper, the traffic controller either said or the official heard that the chopper had landed somewhere.