Airport staff calls off nationwide strike

The Airports Authority of India [ Images ] employees have deferred their proposed nationwide agitation from midnight following a "favourable" Delhi [ Images ] High Court order, a union leader said.

Earlier, the Airports Authority and security agencies had an emergency meeting in Kolkata [ Images ] to chalk out a contingency plan to deal with the 48-hour all-India strike at airports that was scheduled to begin from midnight, hours before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [ Images ] is scheduled to land for electioneering.

A high-level meeting was held at the NSC Bose International Airport ahead of the proposed strike, called by CITU-affiliated Airports Authority Employees' Unions, to draw up a contingency plan to deal with the strike which, AAI sources feared, might lead to a total collapse of airport services.

The union's general secretary, Dipankar Ghosh, said the strike, was planned simultaneously at all airports, in protest against alleged retrenchment of temporary staff, arbitrary transfer and compulsory retirement schemes for employees.

Ghose had said that 3,000 union members in Kolkata would join the strike along with 15,000 of their members all over the country. He alleged AAI had resorted to retrenchment of temporary staff engaged in modernisation schemes in Delhi and Chennai airports.