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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, JUNE 12: Indian Airlines (IA) is in the dock with the Civil Aviation Ministry for bumping-off 20 passengers with confirmed tickets from the inaugural Kathmandu flight on June 1. Secretary Civil Aviation A H Jung wants to take action “for the lapse” and wants “responsibility be fixed by IA”.
The ministry’s written missile was shot off to the new IA Chief Sunil Arora by joint-secretary Anurag Goyal on June 2 – the day after the off-loading. Interestingly, ministry officials are also viewing it as a partial case of sour grapes since both Goyal and Arora were in the running for the IA chief’s job. Arora who is junior to Goyal won out. Says an amused senior official: “Goyal has certainly displayed undue alacrity in ticking off IA.”.
In the unusually curt letter Goyal directs Arora to “submit a report to the government latest by June 9”. The letter says: “Secretary civil aviation feels that IA should have ensured that while issuing the tickets passengers are clearly briefed about the need to carry photo-identification and the documents which should have been valid for this purpose should also have been specified….. and the system improved to ensure that in future there is no recurrence of such instances.”
The incident that sparked off IA’s problems happened when 20 passengers with confirmed tickets could not board flight IC-813 from Delhi to Kathmandu since the IA staff were not satisfied with the photo identity documents the passengers produced. The disappointed passengers were forced to return home after IA officials refused to allow them to board the flight. Some of the passengers were actually carrying identification which was not accepted by IA staff.
In their defence IA officials say that they are being made scapegoats and action will be taken against them for just doing their job. They say that IA issued advertisements on the resumption of flights to Kathmandu which clearly state: “It is reiterated that passengers are required to carry with them one of the following documents for identification purposes while travelling to Kathmandu.” These include passports, driving licenses with photo, photo identity cards issued by the government, ration card with photo and the identity cards issued by the Election Commission. “Two IAS officials are slugging it out and some junior IA official will be punished. If we had not stopped those passengers we would have been in trouble for that,” says an IA official.
IA is now cobbling together a report on the incident with Arora sticking to his guns, citing the advertisement IA had issued, while declining to take action against any IA official.
