New Delhi: The ministry of civil aviation on Monday, February 6, confirmed in the Rajya Sabha that passenger, identified by the Congress as BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, who had opened the emergency exit door of an Indigo flight from Chennai to Trichy on December 10, 2022, was the only one to have done so during the last five years.In response to a question on “mishandling of the emergency door of aircraft” raised by MPs Mohammed Nadimul Haque, Elamaram Kareem and John Brittas, the minister of state for civil aviation, General V.K. Singh (Retd.), submitted in the Rajya Sabha that “during the last five years, one incident has come to notice of DGCA regarding the opening of the emergency exit door, while the aircraft was on the ground. This was on Indigo flight 6E7339, Chennai to Trichy on 10 December 2022.” The minister added that “the flight departed only after completing all the safety checks/ protocols”.In their question, the MPs had asked about the details of punishments in case passengers open the emergency door of an aircraft without any such instruction given by the crew. Among other things they had also asked about the details of safety guidelines issued by the ministry, if any; the compensation to be awarded to passengers in such cases; whether the government has issued any orders to aircrafts to restructure their emergency doors in case they are prone to be mishandled by passengers; and the details of the person involved in the December 2022 incident.In his reply, Singh said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) Section 3-Air Transport, Series M Part VI titled -“Handling of Unruly passengers”. The response added that “whenever an airline receives a complaint of unruly behaviour from the pilot-in[1]command, the incident is referred by the airlines to an ‘Internal Committee’ constituted by them as per provisions of the CAR”.As for the compensation to be awarded in such cases, it added that “as per Carriage by Air Act, 1972, in case of death or bodily injury to a passenger on board an aircraft, the airline is liable to pay damages up to 1,13,100 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger during international travel and up to Rs 20 lakh per passenger during domestic travel.”The minister said no order has been issued by DGCA to air operators to restructure their emergency doors.Though Singh did not name Tejasvi Surya as the passenger who had opened the aircraft emergency door on December 10, 2022, the Congress had on January 17 claimed that it was indeed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bangalore South who was involved in the incident. The Karnataka Congress had, through a series of tweets, claimed that the Union government had tried to hide Surya’s misconduct for over a month. Incidentally, Surya is also the BJP Yuva Morcha president.Though Surya neither confirmed or denied the allegation of the Congress, a day later, on January 18, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia stated that Surya had himself reported and apologised for the incident. He claimed that the door was accidentally opened by the MP.The news agency PTI had quoted him as saying: “When the incident happened, Tejasvi Surya ji himself reported that incident, based on which the full protocol was followed as DGCA itself has investigated and enunciated. The full protocol was followed and pressurisation was checked, all the other checks were in place, and only then (did) the aircraft take off. I think he apologised…”Meanwhile, to another question from Brittas on the “increase in untoward incidents in air travel”, Singh said the DGCA had brought out Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR), Section 3- Air Transport, Series M, and Part VI titled “Handling of unruly / disruptive passengers” in September 2017.The MoS added that CAR was notified as a measure to deal with the issue related to the handling of unruly or disruptive passengers and also provided “measures to pre-empt such incidents by way of training of flight crew, cabin crew and ground staff in soft skills to deal with unruly passengers besides how to detect, diffuse and prevent critical situation.”He said the CAR also “provides for training of such operative personnel for dealing with conflict and its aftermath, ways/means to mitigate situation arising due to long waiting lines, flight being overbooked, delays and diversion/cancellation as well as lack of information, etc”.On the number of instances of such misbehaviour by passengers, the minister’s reply said “a total of 63 passengers have been placed on “No Fly List” for last 1 year, as recommended by the airline’s Internal Committee”.He added that there were “two incidents of urinating that have come to the notice of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)” in the last year. Overall, the MoS said, “the majority of the passengers placed in ‘No Fly List’ were for violations related to not wearing masks or not obeying the instructions of the crew members”.