Indigo Turmoil: Nara Lokesh’s Name in Unexpected Debate!
The issue currently creating a massive uproar across the country is the crisis caused by Indigo Airlines. Over the past few days, thousands of Indigo flights have been canceled, causing immense inconvenience to passengers. In some places, passengers, losing patience, were seen attempting to attack Indigo staff, and such videos have surfaced. On the other hand, no one is able to clearly say when this problem will be resolved. Naturally, travel increases during the month of December. There are many reasons for this — year-end, Christmas holidays, and various other factors push many people to plan their travel in December. Employees also try to use their leftover leaves during this month.
What does Andhra Pradesh IT and Human Resources Minister Nara Lokesh have to do with the Indigo crisis? Republic TV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami conducted a debate on the Indigo crisis. Former MLC and Chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Employment Generation & Enterprise Development Society, Deepak Reddy, participated on behalf of the TDP. In this debate, Arnab Goswami severely criticized the Central Government, alleging that it had ignored passenger safety and succumbed to the blackmail of Indigo Airlines. He accused the government of granting fresh exemptions to Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) even after giving two years of time.
When Arnab asked Deepak Reddy for his response on this issue, he said that Minister Nara Lokesh was reviewing the situation and that an emergency war room had been set up. Arnab replied by questioning how Nara Lokesh was monitoring the situation when he was not the Civil Aviation Minister. He asked repeatedly under what authority a state minister could monitor an issue that had affected the entire nation. He questioned several times what authority Nara Lokesh had to monitor the condition of the country’s Civil Aviation Ministry. Responding to this, Deepak Reddy said that the Prime Minister’s Office was monitoring the situation and that the Civil Aviation Ministry had set up an emergency war room to assess the situation 24/7. He added that Nara Lokesh was monitoring the situation from the party’s side to help deal with the crisis. Arnab again questioned how the party was involved in this matter.
Deepak Reddy replied that this was not a party or political issue but a matter related to public inconvenience. When Arnab further questioned whether this was the Civil Aviation Ministry or the TDP ministry, Deepak said that a war room had been set up and that Lokesh was monitoring from there. He also mentioned that Indigo is a private company and operates according to its own methods, and that a committee had been formed to investigate the reasons leading to this situation. When Deepak Reddy spoke as if asking, “What else can we do?”, Arnab criticized that speaking in such a manner while being part of a government was not proper. The video of Deepak Reddy participating in the Republic TV debate is now being widely circulated in WhatsApp groups.
While Deepak Reddy tried to elevate their leader Nara Lokesh, it has backfired and is being discussed even among TDP leaders, who say that it resulted in national-level embarrassment. Criticism is also being heard that instead of speaking about the Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu, he unnecessarily dragged Lokesh’s name throughout the debate, thereby embarrassing the Minister as well. Some leaders commented that he brought up an issue unrelated to both the TDP and Nara Lokesh, thereby causing unwanted trouble for the party.
