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The court stated that the judgement of the single bench of the Delhi High Court, which struck down the policy was wrong.
The Supreme Court thus dismissed the appeals of the Indian Airlines Officers' Association, IA Cabin Crew Association and the IA Officers' Welfare Forum.
Initially, they had won in the high court when it asked the airlines "to re-frame the policy of cadre merger by assessing and determining the equation of posts by taking into consideration the guiding factors laid down by the Supreme Court."
However, a division bench of the same high court had overruled that order. The airline officers therefore appealed to the Supreme Court against the division bench judgement, but lost.
In order to absorb the large number of employees of the wound-up public sector airlines, Indian Airlines created a "short haul operations department" which consisted of Vayudoot employees in their grouped order of seniority as per their length of service with designation as were applicable with the IA.
The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice H K Sema, which examined the scheme, approved of this step.
Further, they cited earlier Supreme Court judgements like that in the Balco disinvestment case and asserted that any policy decision, unless it was arbitrary, unreasonable or capricious could not be set aside by the court if it is challenged by the employees.
"Even the managerial duties in IA as well as Vayudoot would involve technical questions as to the nature of duties, training required and desirable qualifications... In the wake of experts spending their valuable time to frame the policy regarding the fusion, we would be slow to interfere with such policy," the judgement said.
