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New Delhi: Airlines have no authority to impose flying ban on anybody, including parliamentarians, and the law of the land should take its course, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said today.
The remarks came after SP member Naresh Agrawal raised the issue of recent flying ban imposed by major domestic airlines, including state-owned Air India.
Agrawal wanted to know if the airlines could impose such restrictions.
According to him, such an action was a breach of privilege of the Members of Parliament. To this, Kurien said agreed that Agrawal has raised a “valid point” that if any MP has committed a crime or something against the law, the law of the land should take its course.
“Airlines are not given the authority to punish anybody. I think the government should take note of it. “MPs are also citizens … if they commit a crime or mistake, the law of the land should take recourse to it,” the Deputy Chairman said.
He further said “it is a punishment imposed on an MP for some crime…This cannot be done. This is not a thing to be punished by airlines”.
Congress MP Anand Sharma suggested to the Deputy Chairman that the word ‘crime’ should be replaced with ‘violation’.
However, Kurien said if a person beats up someone, it is a crime.
Different airlines yesterday lifted the flying ban on TDP MP J C Diwakar Reddy after “urgent” notices from the court to the government and the aviation regulator DGCA on the lawmaker’s plea against the action of domestic carriers.
Image: Several airlines had imposed a fly ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad after he assaulted an Air India employee in March this year. The ban was later lifted.
