On Monday, Air India was forced to withdraw its boarding passes that had an advertisement featuring the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani. This was done post criticism on social media. Earlier, passengers shared the photos of their boarding passes and one of them wrote on Twitter, “my Air India boarding pass prominently flashes Narendra Modi, Vibrant Gujarat & Vijay Rupani…Wonder why we are wasting public money on this Election Commission (sic).”
This was a reason of great uproar and the way the model code of conduct was fearlessly flouted. Following this, the airline said it was “rolling back” the boarding passes. The airline for obvious reasons did not divulge the name of the advertiser, but mentioned that the advertisement was not as per its code. Airlines often advertise to increase their non-fare revenue given by 3rd party providers but this was taking it too far.
The Vibrant Gujarat Summit was organised by the Gujarat State government and was held in Gandhinagar from January 18 to 20. The summit was long over, but Air India continued to provide boarding passes having this advertisement, to passengers, all across its network.
There have been similar instances with GoAir as well. National Conference leader, Omar Abdullah tweeted about a similar experience with GoAir. “I was on a GoAir flight yesterday & also had a similar boarding pass with the PM’s photo on it,” he wrote. GoAir, did not respond to a query whether they too would be withdrawing their boarding passes containing the photo of the PM.
The railways too have had similar instances of the photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi featuring on railway tickets. The Trinamool Congress complained to the Election Commission about this occurrence and as a result railway tickets with the photo of Narendra Modi were withdrawn.
According to a model code of conduct, advertisements that come at the cost of public exchequer, misuse of official mass media during the election period for partisan coverage and publicising achievements are strictly barred and political parties are to adhere to it.
