New Delhi [India], June 20 : Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday lashed out at opposition leaders who levelled allegations on him that airfares in India were out of control.
In an apparent attack on Congress leader KC Venugopal and P Chidambaram, who recently raised questions on airfares, Scindia, talking tosaid, "The public has shown the mirror many times to those who want to do politics."
Endorsing that the airfares have been on the higher side this time due to demand and supply mismatch, he also explained the reason for the sudden hike in airfares.
"There are two reasons behind this increase in fares, our civil aviation sector is a seasonal sector, we have high season and low season, during the high season one of our airlines (Go First) stopped operation, its pressure was on, air demand had also increased a lot, On the basis of that the fares increased but I had held a meeting on this issue on June 5 and there has been a reduction of 16 to 64 percent in its fares," he told ANI.
The airline operator Go First had in early May filed for voluntary insolvency and since then its operations were kept stalled, which led to the hike in airfare on some routes. A portion of the routes that were earlier being served by GoFirst, which is under stress now, have already been allotted to other airlines, Scindia said earlier.
Recently former union minister and senior congress leader P Chidambaram took a jibe on Twitter that, criticising the BJP-led central government for rising airfares in the country.
Taking to Twitter, the veteran Congress member compared airfares in various routes with varying differences.
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal and Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia too had a Twitter spat on the hike in airfares. Venugopal in a long tweet slammed Scindia saying the current govt has been incapable of curbing this price rise, preventing predatory behaviour on the part of airlines.
Venugopal said in a fresh rebuttal late on Sunday, that "demonstrating hard facts and the everyday pain of the middle class by distorting figures and misrepresenting real facts can't be done away with," in response to Scindia's earlier remarks calling their argument "misinformed".
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