Dayanidhi Maran was stumped when the captain of his Delhi-Chennai Indigo flight asked if he recognised him. It turned out to be his fellow Parliamentarian Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran was in for a surprise when he boarded an Indigo flight from Delhi to Chennai after attending a meeting of the Parliamentary Estimates Committee. As he took his seat in the front row, the captain of the flight addressed him, saying, “So you are travelling in this flight as well.” Dayanidhi Maran was stumped and for a moment he could not recognise the man behind his mask. “So you don’t recognise me!” the captain exclaimed in a familiar voice. But the smile behind the mask soon gave it away.
“I realised then that it was none other than my colleague, senior Member of Parliament and former Union Minister- my very good friend Thiru Rajiv Pratap Rudy!” MP Dayanidhi said in a social media post after the incident. “Just 2 hours ago, he and I were part of intense discussions at the Estimates Committee and now I couldn’t believe my eyes, seeing his transformation from a politician to a pilot,” he said.
“I was pleasantly surprised and told Rudyji that I couldn’t believe that he was going to be the captain flying us from Delhi to Chennai. He laughed and said “Yes, I noticed that you didn’t recognise me, I fly frequently!” I could only say that I was honoured to be flown by my good friend and colleague. Rudyji also served as a Minister of State, when my father was the Union Minister for Commerce,” the MP wrote.
Dayanidhi called it a flight to remember, exclaiming that it is not often that a sitting MP is also the captain of a commercial flight. “A flight to remember indeed! How often does a sitting Member of Parliament captain a commercial flight? I’m sure I will be talking about this for a long time,” he added.
Rajiv Pratap Rudy is the MP of Saran Chapra in Bihar and a spokesperson of the BJP. He is also a commercial pilot who is credited in the Limca Book of Records for being the only Parliamentarian to fly a commercial aircraft, having flown an Airbus-320 of Indigo airlines.
Dayanidhi Maran is a prominent member of the DMK, representing Chennai Central in Tamil Nadu.
Source: The News Minute