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Air India has dragged Kingfisher Airlines to the Bombay High court over dues of Rs 39 crore in ground handling charges at the Kochi airport. The sum includes Rs 20 crore in principal amount and Rs 19 crore interest and pertains to a ground-handling contract with the erstwhile Air Deccan and Kingfisher Airlines.
"The suit has been admitted in the Bombay High Court and summons have been served on Kingfisher Airlines. The matter will come up for hearing in March,” said M V Kini, counsel for Air India.
Kingfisher ceased operations in October 2012, following a strike by engineers. The airline’s operating permit expired in December that year and it is facing a barrage of claims and litigations over dues. Kingfisher did not respond to an email.
Last month, the high court admitted the state-owned carrier's civil suit. Air India said it had a ground handling agreement with Air Deccan, which was taken over by Kingfisher, from 2008. The agreement was terminated by Kingfisher in 2011.
While Kingfisher has contested Air India’s claim of Rs 7.38 crore towards dues of Air Deccan, it admitted liability for settle Deccan’s dues. However, Kingfisher contends Deccan’s dues amount to Rs 3.6 crore and it had to be reconciled. The airline also pointed out that Air India had not accounted for Rs 6 lakh in tax deducted at source for Air Deccan. The two airlines held a conciliation meeting, which was also attended by representatives of the Kochi airport, but without any result.
Air India served a legal notice on Kingfisher in February 2011, seeking recovery of its dues but Kingfisher rejected the claim. Kingfisher’s lawyers said Air India’s notice was addressed to the “wrong entity”.
"The suit has been admitted in the Bombay High Court and summons have been served upon Kingfisher Airlines. The matter will come up for hearing in March,'' said M V Kini, counsel for Air India.
KFA staff to go on a hunger strike
Meanwhile, employees of Kingfisher Airlines who have not been paid salaries for the past 17 months today threatened to launch an indefinite hunger strike from Monday demanding stringent action against the defaulting company.
They also sought disqualification of corporate leaders from the membership of Parliament on charges of such default.
"We are going on indefinite hunger strike from January six. We have approached other political parties as well but as of now we have not got any satisfactory response from them. We request you to support us in whatever ways possible," Anjan Kumar Deveshwar, a Kingfisher employees, said in a letter on behalf of the employees to Delhi minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia.
Alleging that Kingfisher kept paying its employees posted abroad due to the strict laws applicable there, they said, "Non payment of salary should be treated as a cognizable offence so that no one else has to suffer like us."
As of now there is no clear law to deal with non-payment of salary by the management, the staffers said in the letter.
Besides non-payment of salaries, the Vijay Mallya-owned private carrier, which stopped operations in October 2012, has defaulted on payment of loans worth over Rs 7,200 crore, secured mainly from the public sector banks.
It also owes over Rs 390 crore to the Airports Authority of India, in addition to defaulting on service tax payment.
The Kingfisher employees also urged AAP to move the Supreme Court and use the Right to Information Act on the issue, saying "It is public money on which they thrive. Therefore, it is the right of public to ascertain that their hard earned money is not misused
