India’s private sector airline, Kingfisher Airlines has crossed the deadline for payment of taxes to the country’s tax authorities.

The tax authorities had given the company until Saturday to pay at least Rs 9 crores out of the pending Rs 60 crores of service tax dues. The failure to pay the due amount leads to the tax authorities freezing the company’s accounts again over the non-payment of taxes. The Income Tax authorities de-froze the company’s account in February after Kingfisher Chairman Vijay Mallya paid up dues worth Rs 20 crores.

Meanwhile, the employees of Kingfisher Airlines had demanded payment of salaries for two months to February 2012by 8 pm on 3 April 2012 from the management.

The demand for payment of salaries came following letter from Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya addressed on 1 April 2012. Employees said that the situation has become such that the operations of the airline has become unsafe due to stress caused by nonpayment of salaries.

Vijay Mallya might be planning to offload some of his personal holdings in the flagship, United Breweries unit of the UB group in order to raise enough money to help save his company’s Kingfisher airlines, which once appeared to be ready to emerge as the leading airline in the country.

According to a media report citing people closer to the matter, Mallya might sell 13 per cent of United Breweries, which is worth about $370 million, to Heineken. United Breweries is a profitable unit of the company has a massive
50 percent market share in the domestic beer market.

According to estimates, Kingfisher has a total debt of about Rs 7,000 crore and accumulated losses of about Rs 6,000 crores.