New Delhi: Airport operations are likely to be affected from Wednesday as employees today threatened to launch an indefinite non-cooperation movement following rejection of their demand to continue operations of existing airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The decision of the Airport Authority Employees Joint Forum came after the talks between its leaders and Civil Aviation Secretary Ashok Chawla failed. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said as of now, under the contractual obligations with the builders of the new airports in the two cities, the existing airports have to be closed.

He said the complaints of the people there were not related to the new airports but to the connectivity and hoped the concerned state governments would take as much interest in providing proper infrastructure as the Centre did for building new airports. CITU leaders M K Pandhe, Dipankar Mukherjee and CPI-M MP Amitabha Nandi were also present during the talks.

"We have decided to resume our agitational programme as the ministry is bent upon closing down the airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore. As part of this, we will go on a non-cooperation movement at all airports across the country from the midnight of March 11-12," the Forum Convenor M K Ghoshal told PTI after the talks.

Source : PTI