Why Supreme Court rejected writ petitions filed by Air India employees

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the writ petitions filed by employees against Air India over salary and promotion dues [RS Madireddy and anr vs Union of India and ors]..A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta said that writ petitions would no longer be maintainable since Air India is no longer a government entity after the airline's privatisation and hence, cannot be subject to the Court's writ jurisdiction. The Court found no reason to deviate from the view taken by the Bombay High Court in this regard in 2022."We do not find any reason to take a different view from the one taken by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court in sustaining the preliminary objection qua maintainability of the writ petitions preferred by the appellants and rejecting the same as being not maintainable. The appeals are dismissed. No order as to costs," the Court said..The verdict came on an appeal against a September 2022 Bombay High Court order which too had held that writ petitions by employees against the airline over salary and promotion dues were not maintainable, given the airline's privatisation..The Supreme Court had in January last year year sought the response of the Central government and Air India Limited in the matter. The Bombay High Court had ruled that although the petitions were maintainable when they were instituted, the privatisation of Air India took it beyond the court's jurisdiction to issue a writ, order or direction to the company..The top court underscored that after its disinvestment, Air India ceased to be a State or its instrumentality within Article 12 of the Constitution, and so could not be made subject to writ jurisdiction."By no stretch of imagination, the delay in disposal of the writ petitions could have been a ground to continue with and maintain the writ petitions because the forum that is the High Court where the writ petitions were instituted could not have issued a writ to the private respondent which had changed hands in the intervening period", it added.The apex court observed that the rights of the appellants to claim relief before appropriate fora have been protected. "In case the appellants choose to approach the appropriate forum for ventilating their grievances as per law ... Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 shall come to the rescue insofar as the issue of limitation is concerned"..The pleas before the High Court had been filed by retired employees against the airline and the Union government, alleging violations of Articles 14, 16 and 21 of the Constitution on account of stagnation in pay as well as non-promotion.The question was whether the petitions should be decided as per facts as on the date of institution or whether events fundamentally impacting the jurisdiction of the court will render the petitions non-maintainable.The High Court had noted that the issue of maintainability of writ petitions owing to privatisation of a company, was no longer res-integra.While disposing of the petitions, it had stated that the time of pendency of the case will not be counted for calculating limitation period in case the petitioners wished to pursue a different remedy in accordance with law.The employees then moved the Supreme Court by way of the present appeal..Senior Advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and S Niranjan Reddy appeared for the contesting respondents before the top court. They were briefed by Advocate Kunal Chatterjee and a team from Svarniti Law Offices comprising Advocates Amit Mishra, Mitakshara Goyal, Azeem Samuel, Akhil Kulshestra, and Yashika.Senior Advocate Sanjay Singhvi briefed by advocate Sandeep Deshmukh appeared for the appellants..[Read Judgment]