New Delhi, Oct 17 : Taking the credit for last night''s reinstatement of Jet Airways'' sacked employees, nearly 1900 in number, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel today said that the employees were taken back by the Airlines after he had asked its chief Naresh Goyal to do the same.

"I did speak to Naresh Goyal and impressed upon him. We need a permanent solution, as losses in airlines are severe," said Praful Patel.

The Government was under huge pressure to see that the crisis did not snowball as many political parties had aired their reservation against the move.

Earlier, last night, while announcing reinstatement of the employees, Goyal had said the decision had not been prompted by political pressure, but by his own conscience.

"I couldn''t take the sight of all these young boys and girls who had been laid off. I took this decision because of my own conscience, and not in response to any political pressure. I made this decision just now when I was on my way to this place with my wife," he said.

He told his sacked employees: "I apologise for all the agony you had to go through for two days. You can all come back to work from tomorrow. We have decided to take back all the employees."

The company had earlier said that it was forced to trim the staff to cut its losses, but Goyal claimed that he was not there when the decision was taken and he was came to know about this later.

On Wednesday, Jet Airways had announced that it would retrench around 1900 employees to cut operational costs.

Patel maintained that the decision (of retrenching employees) was under consideration of individual airlines as they were facing a major financial crisis, primarily due to high fuel prices.

On Monday, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines, which between them have about 60 per cent of the domestic market, agreed for an alliance to cut costs through code-sharing, sharing of ticketing, ground services, joint fuel management, crew training and utilisation. (ANI)