SC refuses to stay AAI royalty hike

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to interfere with the revision of royalty charges by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) on a plea by the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA).

The court noted that the application by the umbrella body for private airlines could not be taken up with their petition on the governments revised ground-handling policy and asked the FIA to move a separate plea to raise protest against the enhanced charges. AAI has more than doubled the charges for ground handling services across 60 of its airports.

In a letter sent on July 31 to all airlines,AAI informed that effective from August 1,ground-handling agencies will have to pay between 32-36 per cent of their revenues to AAI from the earlier 13 per cent.

Appearing for FIA,senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi requested a Bench led by Justice TS Thakur to intervene and stay the operation of the hike order.

He claimed it was apparently in contrast with the courts earlier order whereby the government was asked to maintain status quo regarding ground-handling.

The previous dispute over ground-handling had erupted after the government restrained private airlines from operation of ground-handling services through outsourcing and asked them to engage only government-approved agencies.

On the FIAs challenge,the apex court had ordered status quo. This case is expected to come up next week for final disposal.

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If the AAI is allowed to collect this royalty from us,there is no meaning of a status quo since this charge is with respect to ground-handling only. Airlines were not even consulted on this, argued Rohatgi.