Can AI pay a month’s salary to terminated pilots, asks HC
New Delhi: 01.03.2021`
Delhi High Court has directed Air India (AI) to inform it whether the airline can, in an interim arrangement, pay a month’s salary to pilots who have challenged the termination of their contractual employment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Justice Prathiba M Singh asked the lawyer appearing for the airline to seek instructions “for payment of one month’s salary immediately, as an ad-interim arrangement, especially in view of the difficulties being faced by the petitioners (pilots) during the pandemic”.
The court was hearing two pleas moved by the pilots, through advocate Lalit Bhardwaj, for quashing an April 2, 2020 order suspending their services and the subsequent order of August 7, 2020 by which they were all terminated.
Justice Singh, referring to the facts of the case, said that it was “prima facie clear that the suspension, which was issued in April 2020, was nothing but termination for which one month notice was to be issued as per the contract”.
The court, however, said that it was leaving open for now the question of whether the contracts were rightly terminated or not and listed the matter for hearing on March 25.
Bhardwaj, during the hearing, said that AI, on November 23, 2020, was asked by the court to take instructions on whether the terminated contractual pilots can be paid one month’s salary as an interim arrangement.
The contention was refuted by AI’s lawyer who claimed the plea was not maintainable as the subject matter of the disputes are private contracts and there is no public function involved. PTI
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