India / You have no shame: Passenger to BJP MP Pragya over flight delay; video surfaces

Two days after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Pragya Singh Thakur accused private carrier SpiceJet of not giving her the seat she had booked, a video has surfaced which shows the MP from Bhopal being confronted by the passengers.

In the video, people can be seen confronting the BJP MP and reminding her that she is people’s representative and her job is not to “trouble them”. “You are people’s representative. Your job is not to trouble us. You should come by the next flight,” a man is heard telling Thakur.

The BJP MP then argues that why would she be going when there is “no first class, no facilities”, only to get a retort from him that “first class is not her right” in the 1.34 minute-long-clip.

Passengers on Spicejet flight tell BJP MP Pragya Thakur not to cause trouble and not hold the plane at Ransom. pic.twitter.com/4VAVqRRyDt

— Nagarjun Dwarakanath (@nagarjund) December 22, 2019

Pragya Thakur complains about the language used, to which he replied, “I am using absolutely correct language.”

The BJP MP was flayed online too. #PragyaSinghThakur trended with 3,379 tweets, with many users slamming the controversial leader for her behaviour.

Thakur had booked a seat in SpiceJet flight SG2489 from Delhi to Bhopal and had come to the airport in her own wheelchair on Saturday.

She alleged that the airline did not let her sit at the pre-booked seat in the emergency row citing rules. “They did not give me the booked seat. I asked them to show the rules. I called the director and lodged a complaint with him,” she said.

There were reports that the flight got delayed by approximately 45 minutes due to this matter.

A SpiceJet spokesperson said, “The Delhi-Bhopal flight is operated by Bombardier Q400 aircraft (78 seater). On this aircraft, the first row is the emergency row seat and is not allocated to passengers on wheelchairs.

“As the BJP MP had come with her own wheelchair and had not booked through the airline, the staff wasn’t aware of this fact that she was a wheelchair passenger.

“She was requested by the crew to shift to 2 A/B (non-emergency row) due to safety reasons but she refused. The duty manager and other staff also requested her to move to another seat,” the spokesperson said.

While some restless passengers requested Thakur to change her seat from the emergency row, which is not allocated to passengers on wheelchairs, to a non-emergency row, others requested the crew to offload her as she was refusing to change the seat, according to the airline’s spokesperson.