Opposition slams Centre for mishandling IndiGo flight cancellation crisis

Opposition parties Friday criticised the Centre over the largescale cancellation of flights by the country's largest airline IndiGo in the past few days due to new rostering norms mandated by the civil aviation regulator. They accused the government of mishandling the situation, causing major inconvenience to passengers.

Alleging that the imbroglio was due to the government's "monopoly model", Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on X: "IndiGo fiasco is the cost of this Govt's monopoly model. Once again, it's ordinary Indians who pay the price - in delays, cancellations and helplessness. India deserves fair competition in every sector, not match-fixing monopolies".

Parliamentarians across parties voiced concerns over the worsened state of affairs at IndiGo."Passengers are facing a lot of trouble. The government should try to improve the situation at the earliest. Government should interfere to provide relief to passengers," Dimple Yadav from the Samajwadi Party told reporters. Sandosh Kumar (CPI) said, "This mess has been going on for the last two days. Why do we have the Union Ministry to control all these things? Where was the Union Minister? Is he sleeping? IndiGo is the largest private airline operator in our country. It's not just an accident. A very serious probe is needed. I demand an enquiry into it"


Anil Desai (SS-UBT) said, "If our infrastructure isn't perfect, the government is also responsible for it. Passengers have to bear the brunt of consequences. If you go to cancel your ticket, it's reduced to zero under "no-show" rules. If passengers try to cancel, they face hefty cancellation charges. Now, if cancellation charges are levied 48 hours in advance, they won't be deducted. But that hasn't been implemented yet. I urge the government to raise this issue in Parliament".