Passenger services restored at Delhi airport

Employees are engaged in cleaning the littered terminal and passenger services like baggage handling are functioning normally.

Passenger services were restored at the IGI airport in New Delhi on Friday after the nationwide agitation by airport employees was called off following an assurance from the government that no more airports would be closed down without consulting them.

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Employees were engaged in cleaning the littered terminal and passenger services like baggage handling were functioning normally.

Though flight operations were not affected by the two-day 'non-cooperation movement' called by Airports Authority Employees Joint Forum, it had its impact on sanitation, ground handling and other facilities at several airports across the country.

The decision to call off the agitation was taken after the employees' representatives, accompanied by CPI(M) and CITU leaders MK Pandhe, Tapan Sen and Dipankar Mukherjee, had an almost hour-long meeting with Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.

After Patel's assurances, the Forum leaders met separately and decided to withdraw their agitation.

The employees, protesting the government's decision to close existing airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad on completion of the new ones, were assured by Patel that modernisation of 35 non-metro airports would be undertaken with "full involvement" of the AAI and its employees.