It was clear early on that the four airlines that banned standup comic Kunal Kamra for heckling journalist Arnab Goswami had overstepped their remit. Indigo, which Kamra and Goswami were flying, didn’t even have a complaint from the pilot that is a must under the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) to take such action. Worse, Go, Air India, and Spicejet took their cue from a tweet by civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri “advising” other airlines to act! This followed Indigo tagging Puri in its tweet about the ban, which would suggest some back-channel prodding form the ministry. While Puri’s action doesn’t befit his role, that Goswami routinely uses his channel to fusillade the government’s critics made the optics even worse. However, it is perhaps the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the regulator, that has lost sheen the most in the matter.
