Stand up to injustice

 A stand up comedian, Kunal Kamra, has received a six-month ban from IndiGo for heckling TV anchor Arnab Goswami inside an IndiGo flight on January 28. What followed was after the comedian had shared a video on Twitter where he was heard telling Goswami that “viewers today want to know” if Arnab is a coward or a nationalist. He continued: “Arnab, this is for national interest. I am part of the tukde-tukde narrative. You should deflate me. You should take the enemy of the states down.” This was about the CAA which Kamra opposed. Arnab and his TV channel tows the government stand in favour of the CAA. Arnab ignored the comedian. While Kamra was heckling Arnab, Captain Mateti then asked the Lead Cabin Attendant to make Kamra get back to his seat and which he did. The LCA also offered apologies to Arnab and also gave extra refreshments. Reports said Arnab thanked the pilot and made no complaints. After the ban by IndiGo, the civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri backed the six-month ban and later asked other airlines to follow suit. While the government and its supporters backed the ban, most felt it was too harsh and unjustified in the light of how other VVIPs had gone scot free for worse behaviour. After the minister’s tweet which said his ministry had “advise(d)” other airliners too to put him on their no-fly list, other airliners like SpiceJet, Air India and GoAir had taken Puri up on his advice. The minister said he had called for a ban as the video evidence was clear and Kamra’s actions posed a safety threat. However, Captain Rohit Mateti, who commanded the Mumbai-Lucknow flight on January 28 and whose complaint is mandatory for initiating no-fly list proceedings, has said in the letter to the IndiGo management that Kamra cannot be classified as an unruly passenger on the basis of his “unsavoury” behaviour towards Arnab Goswami. Captain Mateti in his email maintained that “Kamra’s behaviour, while unsavoury, was not qualifying of a level 1 unruly passenger. Indeed, we pilots can all attest to incidents similar and/or worse in nature that were not deemed unruly.” The jury is out on whether Puri asked the airliners to act against Kamra for his “offensive behaviour designed to provoke and create disturbance inside an aircraft” or whether he was being targeted for being a known critic of the BJP government at the Centre and going after the head of a TV channel who is pro-government. Though similar incidents have occurred aboard flights involving opposition leaders like Shashi Tharoor, Tejaswi Yadav and also with former student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, neither the government nor the airliners have taken such a drastic step before. Ironically, Tharoor and Yadav had both been heckled by reporters of Republic TV, footage of which was later broadcast on shows hosted by Goswami himself. According to the Civil Aviation Requirements(CAR) rulebook, an airline is within its rights to impose a temporary ban during the period of the deliberations-capped at 30 days- by an internal panel led by a retired district and sessions judge. However, IndiGo’s six-month ban extended well beyond this limit and where no procedures were followed as mandated under Civil Aviation Requirements(CAR). Also no airline is bound by the decision of other airlines but every airline has the right to decide its own list of passengers barred from its flights.