AAI to have control over all airports, says apex court

 A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma directed the DIAL to follow the directive issued by the Centre to abolish the system of hiring contractual workers, saying privatisation of airports does not mean government has control over it.

“Noticing that air traffic services and security are the heart of the airports and also noticing the clauses of operation management development agreement (OMDA) providing for overall supervision of DIAL by AAI, checking of accounts, step in rights of AAI and so on, it must be concluded that AAI has overall control of the airport site,” the bench said. It rejected a plea of the DIAL that the government’s notification issued in July 2004 for regularisation of services of trolley retrievers was not binding on it as it was a private player.

Central authority

“AAI clearly acts under the authority of the Central government and DIAL acts under the authority of AAI because of its contract with DIAL,” the Bench said. It added that it could  logically be stated that DIAL works under the authority of the Central government.

“AAI is under an obligation to follow the directions of the Central government and if DIAL has admittedly assumed those obligations through the OMDA, then DIAL is presumably also obligated to follow such directions, the court said.

DIAL plea

The court passed the order on a petition filed by DIAL challenging the Delhi High Court’s order directing it to abolish system of contractual job as per the government notification.
It directed the DIAL to pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to each of its 136 trolley retrievers who were not reinstated after expiry of their contracts.

Some of the airports in the country, including that in Bangalore, are operated by private players.