Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve heard the news of aircrafts to bullock carts putting Kunal Kamra in a no-fly list for confronting Arnab Goswami. 

While some liberals believe that the confrontation was unnecessary, even they think that the indefinite ban seemed a bit excessive. So, to prove clarity on this matter we looked back into the pages of history to see if precedent had been established for such behaviour. 

1. On the 23rd of March, 2017, Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad beat up a 60-year-old Air India duty manager with his sandals. 

Gaikwad was on a Pune-New Delhi flight, where he was ‘forced’ to travel in the economy class. 

Financial Express

LiveMint reported him saying after the incident: 

I hit him with slippers. That’s what Balasaheb (Thackeray, Shiv Sena founder) has taught us: Whoever does any mischief, you should hit them hard below the ear.

He was then blacklisted for a while after defending his behaviour in the Parliament. But the ban was lifted after he expressed regret for the assault. 

India Today

2. In June 2017, TDP MP JC Diwakar Reddy had a violent outburst at the Visakhapatnam airport.

Reddy had arrived late for his 15th of June flight to Hyderabad and had been denied a boarding pass. The visually angered MP was then caught on security cameras damaging property and allegedly abusing staff. 6 airlines had then banned him but it was soon lifted. 

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However, this was not the first tie Reddy had an issue at the airport. Hindustan Times reported that a year before the said incident, he was allegedly barged into the Air India office at Vijayawada’s Gannavaram airport and damaged furniture after being denied entry to a flight after arriving late. 

3.  Rajya Sabha MP PV Abdul Wahab allegedly called the pilots ‘glorified drivers’ after barging into the cockpit.  

Rajya Sabha MP PV Abdul Wahab had been asked to get off an Air India flight in 2008 in Kozhikode by the pilot Rajat Rana after he had been late for the flight. Wahab had then gone on to barge into the cockpit and call the pilots ‘glorified drivers’. 

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association had then threatened to file a defamation suit against the MP.

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4. In 2005, a Jet Airways air hostess had alleged that Bihar leader Pappu Yadav had misbehaved and threatened to beat her with slippers. 


According to Hindustan Times, Pappu Yadav did this after she asked him not to throw leftovers in the aisle. The commotion in the flight is said to have started when Yadav dropped a dessert on his bag kept near the seat and asked the air hostess to clean up the mess. When she refused, he allegedly threatened to beat her with slippers. 

NDTV

5. Congress MLA Vinod Chandrakar allegedly misbehaved with Air India’s staff after missing his flight. 

According to NDTV, on the 7th of August last year, MLA Vinod Chandrakar was accused of humiliating a female Air India staff at Raipur airport after she had denied him permission to board the plane as he had arrived late to the airport. 

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6. BJP MP Pragya Thakur caused a flight delay by about 45 minutes, after refusing to get up from the emergency seat. 

Thakur had reached the flight on a wheelchair but the airline staff did not allow the wheelchair-bound MP to sit in the seat she had pre-booked as the rules didn’t allow wheelchair passengers in the emergency seats. 

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Thakur, however, refused to budge and got into a verbal fight with the staff and her fellow passengers, insisting that she be shown the rule-book. 

7. Andhra Pradesh MP P. Mithun Reddy allegedly slapped an Air India station manager at the Tirupati airport in 2015. 

According to India Today, the incident took place when Reddy allegedly got into a heated debate with Rajasekhar, a staffer, after getting pissed about being declined boarding passed for him and his relatives as the boarding had already closed for the Air India flight to Delhi. 

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8. On the 24th of June, 2015, 3 passengers had to be offloaded to accommodate Union Minister Kiren Rijiju and his assistant. 

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju was travelling from Leh to Delhi in June 2015. In order to accommodate him and his assistant, 3 members of a family, including a child were asked to vacate their seats from the flight AI-446. The incident not only caused inconvenience to fellow flying passengers but delayed the flight operation as well. 

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9. Congress MP, Kamal Kishor had refused to cooperate with the security personnel at the airport. 

According to The Statesman, the CISF personnel had asked him to place his coat for an X-Ray but he had blatantly refused, causing a serious delay in the security check-up of fellow passengers. He had also apparently complained against the CISF personnel. 

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Now, don’t these guys seem more banworthy?