Till then, officers and engineers who would be retiring today could collect their salaries for the three month notice period while the court was considering their case. The court has however restrained Air-India from evicting the officers from their residential quarters.

All these officers - it is reported that around 500 would be directly affected - would have retired on or after May 1998. However, with the decision of the Union of India to enhance the age of retirement to 60 years, they continued in service.

Air-India after having approved the enhancement later sought and obtained an exemption to the central government'sdecision and reverted to 58 years. The grounds were that it was a loss making public sector unit. An increase in retirement age would lead to a further loss of Rs 60 crore. They also added that the unions were agreeable to the age reversal.

Arguing on their behalf, advocate Anand Grover pointed out that the employees could not be held responsible for the loss that the company was making. The losses were due to its own mismanagement. He added that of the nine recognised unions and associations, only three had supported the age reversal, while three others opposed it and three were neutral.

More importantly, argued Grover, that the exemption sought by Air-India was granted by an administrative exercise and not through the legislature, which thereby allowed a public sector unit to decide its retirement age. He also remarked that the compliance with the governemnt order of May 12, 1998 was required to be ``strict'' and only with a ``specific exemption'' could Air-India escape the implementation. This``specific exemption'' was not obtained.

It was also his case that the other five units under the Ministry of Civil Aviation - Indian Airlines Ltd, Pawan Hans, Hotel Corporation of India, Airports Authority of India and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation - had enhanced the age to 60 years. Allowing only one unit to exempt itself, was unjustifiable and discriminatory, he submitted.