Air India urination case: Delhi High Court asks DGCA to form panel in two weeks to hear accused plea against 'unruly passenger' tag

The Delhi High Court on Thursday directed the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to constitute an appellate committee within two weeks to hear Air India urination case accused Shankar Mishra's appeal against the order designating him as an ‘unruly passenger’ and banning him from flying for four months..Justice Prathiba M Singh passed the order after the Court was informed by the DGCA that the appellate committee does not have a chairperson at present. The counsel said that the appellate committee was functioning till February 9 this year, before the chairperson (a retired judge of the Delhi High Court) had resigned.Justice Singh, therefore, asked the DGCA to constitute the appellate committee within two weeks and hold its first hearing to consider Mishra's case on April 20. The Bench also asked Mishra to move his appeal in the given period. .Mishra was arrested on January 7 on the allegation that he urinated on a 70-year-old woman while he was in an inebriated condition in November last year onboard an Air India flight from Delhi to Bengaluru.He was subsequently removed from his job at Wells Fargo with the company saying that the allegations against him were "deeply disturbing".However, Mishra has maintained that the allegations against him are false and baseless. He was released on bail by Delhi's Patiala House Court on January 31..In his plea filed through Advocates Akshat Bajpai, Ishanee Sharma, Shobhit Trehan and Renuka Parmananda, Mishra stated that the woman had registered a complaint against him on the Airsewa grievance portal on December 20, 2022.In pursuance of the complaint, Air India constituted an internal inquiry committee. On January 18, 2023, the committee issued an order designating him as an 'unruly passenger' and banning him from flying for four months.The petition argued that paragraph 8.5 of the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) for handling unruly passengers envisages that a person aggrieved by an order of the inquiry committee may prefer an appeal within 60 days of the order before an appellate committee constituted by the Ministry of Civil Aviation."The Petitioner, being aggrieved by the order dated 18.01.2023 on grounds of the aforementioned factual and legal infirmities seeks to prefer an appeal against the said order and has written emails to the DGCA [Director General of Civil Aviation] on 19.01.2023 and to the Ministry of Civil Aviation on 20.02.2023, 27.02.2023 and 06.03.2023. However, no such committee has been constituted as of the date of filing this Writ Petition,” the plea stated.The plea further said that it is an established position of law that a statutory right of appeal is a vested right and the non-constitution of the appellate committee by the Ministry of Civil Aviation is eroding his right to exhaust all his remedies available unto him.“As such, the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s inaction is directly infringing the Petitioner’s rights under Article 21 of the Constitution,” it was contended.