Writ Petition Filed In Madras HC Seeking In-Flight Safety Announcements To Be Made In Regional Languages

Petitioner B Ramkumar Adityan has approached the Madras High Court (HC) with a writ petition seeking directions to the Civil Aviation Secretary and the Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ensure that the in-flight safety announcements on planes are also made in the language of the departure and that of vacation spot stations.

Currently, the announcements are made only in Hindi and English.

Furthermore, the petitioner demands the instructions to be made in the languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, namely: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam Manipuri, Marathi, Maithili, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

He contends that a lot of flight passengers are unable to comply with the directions due to lack of the safety announcement in the native language of the two stations, and will not be capable to take applicable steps in case of any emergency.

Sanjib Banerjee, Chief Justice of the HC, has affirmed that the petitioner is allowed to make a detailed illustration to the Civil Aviation Secretary over this matter.

The Secretary will have to come up with a furnished reply to the petitioner within eight weeks provided that Adityan makes the concerned illustration to him in four weeks’ time from now.

However, it has been asserted that it is up to the ministry to take a call on whether directions or orders should be issued to airlines with regards to this issue, the Hindu Business Line reports.