Patna, July 28: Lalu Prasad is earthy. But the RJD leader’s elder son Tej Pratap loves to fly.

Tej, who wishes to soar in the skies, 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. Sources, however, said Lalu had sought chief minister Nitish Kumar’s “push” to fulfil his son’s dream.

Officials rebutted the claim. “Tej has all the requisite qualifications for joining the course. People try to make stories out of nothing,” said an official.

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 three-member committee, consisting of the institute’s chief flight instructor, chief ground instructor and chief engineer, conducts the oral test in the presence of an observer from the directorate-general of civil aviation. A medical test is also conducted.

Lalu’s family is confident their elder son would be able to clear all these hurdles. “Tej is a boy with firm determination and he labours very hard to achieve his goals,” a source close to Lalu’s family told The Telegraph.

He said Tej had been attracted to flying machines since childhood and had many toy aircraft and choppers, which he took great care of.

“He had also purchased a toy flying machine operated by remote control and used to spend quite some time with it,” added the source.

Apart from trying his hands on the remote-controlled machine, Tej also surfs the Net to collect information on the latest aircraft. He reads books on flying machines, said the source.

Lalu is not the only politician whose son has taken admission in the institute.

“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.

The political clan apart, the institute, set up in 1944 and known as Bihar Flying Club before the government took over it in 1974, has produced several well known faces of India’s aviation fraternity.

Durba Banerjee, the first Indian woman piloting a commercial flight, was a student of the institute.