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Informist, Tuesday, May 19, 2026

--NCLT rejects former SpiceJet employees' plea to admit co into insolvency

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal Tuesday rejected a plea by two former employees of SpiceJet Ltd. to initiate insolvency proceedings against the airline. Sameer Breja and Karan Gupta, who worked as captains in the airline, had alleged that SpiceJet had not paid them INR 12.17 million and INR 13.19 million, respectively. A bench of judicial member Mahendra Khandelwal and technical member Anu Jagmohan Singh said the insolvency petition stood "dismissed". A detailed order is awaited. 

 

The case has its genesis in 2020, when SpiceJet implemented salary cuts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the airline had assured employees that deferred payments would be disbursed once operations normalised. However, it later set a condition of achieving 26,000 monthly flight hours to trigger payments. This benchmark was arbitrary and undisclosed during employment, said the pilots.

 

The airline retroactively revised the employees' compensation in June 2020, further reducing their pay, said the pilots. They had no choice but to accept the changes and SpiceJet failed to honor even the revised agreements upon their resignation in 2023, they said. SpiceJet has committed default in paying employment dues, including arrears of salary, deferred payment full and final settlement, allowances, unpaid overtime and other dues, said the employees.   

 

Contesting the insolvency case, SpiceJet had argued that most of the amount claimed by the petitioners was barred by limitation. Last year, the tribunal had observed that it was not a forum for deciding the issue of employment dues. This is neither a labour court nor a court for writ jurisdiction, said the tribunal. The bench said the parties couldn't bring employer-employee relationship disputes before the tribunal.   

 

At 1052 IST, shares of SpiceJet Ltd. were up 3.8% at INR 12.57 on BSE.  End

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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