TLI Staff
New Delhi: Amid protests by Airports Authority of India (AAI) employees against leasing out six more airports including Varanasi and Amritsar to private parties, the Civil Aviation Ministry has circulated draft of the Cabinet note for bidding the airports on public-private-partnership (PPP) basis.
Official sources said that the ministries which are being consulted include Finance, Law and Tourism.
“By now we should have been finalized the Cabinet note but there is a little delay due to certain developments in the last few weeks. The Finance Ministry is busy with the Budget now. But we hope to progress fast on that,” an official said.
The official added that government was committed to privatizing more airports and direct AAI focus on RCS (Regional Connectivity Scheme) airports.
“Once we receive comments from other Ministries we would go ahead with approval process of the Cabinet. Given the issues involved we do not want to rush also at the same time,” the official quoted above said.
Citing the recent bidding participation for Jewar airport in which Zurich Airport won the bid to build the mega project, the official said that there was enough interest from private players for airport development and management.
The six airports up for privatization are Varanasi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Trichy, Raipur and Indore.
Unconvinced by the government logic to privatize these airports, the AAI unions have been agitating against the decision and are doing sit-in protest across various cities. They have received the support of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, an RSS affiliate, in their fight against PPP.
“Once AAI will be left only with small RCS airports it would not be able to bring best machinery and equipment as such investments are viable only if the scale of operation is large. In absence of this, the general public will suffer,” technical personnel from AAI said.
Last year, government put six airports Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram on offer under PPP in spite of reservations from employee groups and various opposition parties.
Bid for all the six airports have been won by Gujarat-based Adani Enterprises. While the Union Cabinet has already cleared hand-over of three airports to Adani, the remaining three are also expected to be approved soon.