Flight safety: Query on BJP MP Tejasvi Surya may expose Civil Aviation Ministry's double-talk

Shubhadeep Choudhury

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New Delhi, February 5

Unstarred question number 337 — listed for the Rajya Sabha session tomorrow — may embarrass the Civil Aviation Ministry by exposing how it turned a blind eye and overlooked a serious incident of safety violation involving ruling party MP Tejasvi Surya.

When the BJP Lok Sabha member from Karnataka was accused of opening the emergency exit door of his IndiGo flight at the Chennai airport on December 10, 2022 causing a two-hour delay and endangering the lives of other passengers in the process, the ministry refused to take any action against Surya and claimed that the door was opened by him “accidentally”.

The clean chit given by the ministry to Surya, who is the president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), has prompted three Opposition MPs — Mohammed Nadimul Haque of Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Elamaram Kareem and John Brittas of CPM — to raise the issue in Parliament in the form of a question.

Since the chair normally discourages taking up an issue related to the member of one House in another House (in this case, an issue involving a Lok Sabha member in the Rajya Sabha), it was decided to put up a question in the Upper House on the aircraft emergency door issue instead of giving a notice for discussing the matter, sources said. The question -– under the title of “mishandling of emergency door of aircraft” -– asks the Civil Aviation Minister regarding “details of such incidents in past five years and action taken thereon and whether such incidents happened in December 2022 and person involved”.