After the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in June gave a go-ahead to Kalrock Capital and Murari Lal Jalan to revive debt-laden Jet Airways, the consortium has decided to pay the staff of the erstwhile airline a sum of Rs 100 crore, which is around 8 percent of the total Rs 1,254 crore owed to them in payments towards provident fund, leave encashment, gratuity, and six months’ salary.

Meaning, if a former employee of Jet Airways had unpaid dues of Rs 5 lakh, they would receive only Rs 40,000.

The consortium also said out of the 4,000 employees, only 50 will be retained in Jet 2.0. According to a report in The Times of India, around 3,796 employees did not resign hoping to be retained whenever Jet resumed operations.

According to the revamp, the rest of the employees will be demerged in a ground-handling subsidiary called ‘Airjet Ground Services Limited (AGSL),’ which is yet to be created. It is proposed that 24 percent shareholding will be with Jet 2.0, and the remaining 76 percent will be offered to the yet-to-be-formed employees’ trust. However, if the trust negates the offer, Jet will retain 100 percent ownership and deal with it as deemed fit, the conglomerate declared.

Jet Airways was started by Naresh Goyal in 1992. During its glory days, it had more than 22,000 employees. The airline was grounded in 2019 due to an acute cash crunch, and all the employees, including some who worked with the airline for more than 25 years, were suddenly jobless.

The resolution plan came from a consortium led by Murari Lal Jalan, an NRI entrepreneur based in the UAE, and Kalrock Capital, a UK-based asset management company.

Jet Airways has admitted claims of Rs 7,460 crore from financial creditors, including State Bank of India (Rs 1,636 crore), Yes Bank (Rs 1,084 crore), Punjab National Bank (Rs 754 crore), and IDBI Bank (Rs 594 crore), among others. However, the Kalrock-Jalan consortium has proposed to repay only Rs 1,183 crore to financial creditors and employees over five years.airways

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Aug 3, 2021 7:41 PM IST