Centre suspends domestic flight ops, TMC says decision delayed

NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday wrote to the Centre asking the civil aviation ministry to suspend all domestic flights to airports in West Bengal, since the state government, had on Sunday declared a lockdown in terms of allowing inward traffic into the state.
Hence when the Centre declared a suspension of all domestic flights later in the day, Trinamool Congress welcomed the move, saying that the “Centre has accepted Banerjee’s request” to stop domestic commercial flights.
However, Banerjee’s party also questioned why the flights were not being suspended from the midnight of March 23, rather than from March 24, a day later.
Banerjee in her letter had requested for the flights to be suspended with “immediate” effect.
Reacting to the Centre’s decision to stop the domestic flights from March 24, midnight, party MP and spokesperson Derek O’Brien tweeted to say, “Why not midnight march 23, itself? GOI ignored health emergency, kept #Parliament open. Now giving MPs time to fly home?”
The Rajya Sabha MP and floor leader of the party has been on self-isolation since it was known that BJP MP Dushyant Singh had been in contact with Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor who tested positive for coronavirus, and O’Brien had spent a good two and half hours sitting next to him earlier in the week at a parliamentary standing committee meeting. He will not be travelling back to Kolkata until his self-quaratine period according to the medical protocol that needs to be followed is over.’