Aiming at a "painless" merger of Air India and Indian, a group of ministers (GoM) will hold its first meeting tomorrow to study the consultant Accenture India's recommendations on the issue and propose a roadmap to complete the process by March next year.The GoM, headed by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, would work in a time-bound manner to finalise a roadmap for the merger and take the proposal to the union cabinet for its approval.In keeping with the concerns of employees of both the state-owned carriers, the central government plans to go ahead with the merger process to ensure that salaries, seniority and other matters remain protected and the integration process is "as painless as possible", official sources said.Accenture India has already submitted its recommendations and has confirmed that due care is being taken to ensure protection of the current salaries, compensation and perks of the staffers of both companies.Besides Mukherjee and civil aviation minister Praful Patel, the GoM has finance minister P Chidambaram, law minister H R Bharadwaj, tourism minister Ambika Soni, Suresh Pachauri (personnel), Prem Chand Gupta (company affairs), Santosh Mohan Deb (public enterprises) and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia as its members.The proposed merger of Air India and Indian would churn out a mega carrier with over 130 aircraft that could take on global giants like Singapore Airlines, Emirates and British Airways. The merger of Jet Airways and Air Sahara, which failed, could have had a combined fleet of about 75-80 planes.
