Telangana minister and CM KCR’s son KT Rao on Sunday slammed IndiGo after a post claiming that a Telugu woman was forced to change her seat on a flight as she could not speak English went viral on Twitter. The minister said that the airlines should “start respecting local languages”.
The minister’s statement came in response to a Twitter thread. An assistant professor at IIM Ahmedabad took to Twitter to flag an incident in an IndiGo flight. “The woman in green originally sitting in 2A (XL seat, exit row) was forced to seat 3C because she understood only Telugu, not English/Hindi. The attendant said it’s a security issue.”
The Twitter user used the hashtag #discrimination with her post.
“Flight from AP to Telangana has no instructions in Telugu, attendant said it’s a safety issue that she doesn’t understand English/Hindi. If unhappy, we (not she) should complain. No dignity, non-Hindi treated as second class citizens in their own state,” she wrote further.
The Telangana minister responded, “Dear @IndiGo6E Management, I request you to start respecting local languages & passengers who may not be well conversant in English or Hindi.”
“In regional routes, recruit more staff who can speak the local language like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada etc. This will be a win-win solution,” he added.”
Twitter says the issue is indeed a ‘safety protocol’
Many Twitteratis, however, pointed out on the original post that the problem is of ‘security protocol’ and not ‘discrimination’.
“While I am against Hindi imposition but here I don’t think it’s a discrimination issue. The crew needs to be able to communicate with those sitting in the emergency row in the unfortunate event of an emergency. Many times people are shifted if the crew feels they aren’t capable.”: a Twitter user wrote.
“Madam it’s very difficult to hire airline crew who could know all the languages of India and putting them in one plane is even harder. The concern was not for security but safety,” another user wrote.
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