New Delhi: In a major setback to Modiluft's plans to restart its airline operations, the Supreme Court has revoked the provisional no objection certificate (NOC) granted to the company on the basis of an interim order of the Delhi High Court.

Allowing an appeal of the Union government, a Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde, Justice Ashok Bhan and Justice B P Singh said the High Court could not have granted a final relief through an interim order and added "the NOC which is said to have been issued provisionally stands revoked".

The apex Court, while setting aside the interim order, directed the High Court to hear the matter and give a final judgement without being influenced by the observations made in this order.

Appearing for the Centre, Attorney General Soli Sorabjee contended that the relief granted by the High Court, though interim in nature, was beyond the ambit of the writ petition itself, apart from being in the nature of final relief.

The bone of contention between the Union government and Modiluft was that the airline was collecting Inland Air Travel Tax (IATT) from its passengers as an agent of the government but had not deposited the same.

This led to the government detaining aircraft of the airline, which were leased from Air UK Leasing Ltd (AUL), which later deposited Rs 12.5 crores with the government to take the aircraft out of India.

PTI