The ban on comedian Kunal Kamra by Indian airlines has been referred to an internal committee in accordance with the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR), the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said on Wednesday.
Multiple airlines, including IndiGo, AirIndia, SpiceJet and GoAir, have banned Kamra from flying with their airlines following Kamra’s alleged heckling of journalist Arnab Goswami on IndiGo flight 6E 5317 from Mumbai to Lucknow.
Kamra had posted a video of him confronting Arnab Goswami on his coverage of Rohit Vemula and his “brand of journalism.”
The incident had sparked debate among netizens, with some lauding Kamra’s actions, while others criticised him for causing disruption on the flight.
IndiGo responded to the incident, announcing on Twitter that Kamra had been barred from flying with the airline for six months.
Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri replied to the airline’s tweet, urging other airlines to do the same to “prevent such behaviour.”
Air India, SpiceJet and most recently, GoAir, have followed suit by banning Kamra from flying with their airlines for an indefinite period of time.
Kamra's statement
Kamra later released his official statement on the airline bans, explaining the situation.
“At no point did I endanger the safety of any passenger on board, the only damage I caused was to the inflated ego to the ‘journalist’ Arnab Goswami,” the statement read.
“I apologised to each crew member personally and to both pilots, by staying back till the end, for any inconvenience that I might have caused during the flight,” Kamra further said in his statement.
HuffPost India on Wednesday had reported that Kamra’s six-month flying ban imposed by IndiGo was a violation of airline rules, the claim being backed by Arun Kumar, Director-General of DGCA.
According to the rules on 'Handling of Unruly Passengers', revised in 2017, an airline is supposed to impose a temporary ban of 30 days and conduct an internal inquiry on the matter, before taking a final decision. The rules are applicable to all-India operators, providing scheduled and non-scheduled air transport services for domestic and international carriage of passengers.
According to the revised regulations, debarment is based on the level of disruption caused by a passenger. The debarment period is up to three months for a passenger who displays verbally unruly behaviour.
So, in Kamra’s case, even if the comedian is found guilty, the debarment period cannot be longer than three months. IndiGo’s six-month ban, thus, goes against the regulations, the report said.
The DGCA later released a statement that it also shared on Twitter denying the violation, claiming that it had been “misquoted/ misrepresented” in the HuffPost article.
The statement said, “This is to reiterate that the action taken by the airlines is in complete consonance with Civil Aviation Requirments on handling of unruly passengers. Now the matter is being referred to an internal committee as prescribed in CAR. Further, the internal committee is to give the final decision in 30 days by giving the reasons in writing, which shall be binding on the airline concerned.”
Kamra had ended up flying on the same airline back to Mumbai as Goswami.
“FYI - Arnab Goswami was in my flight again this morning while returning from Lucknow... I again asked him politely if he wants to have a honest discussion he with his verbal arrogant hand jester he asked me to move away & I did that…” Kamra had tweeted.