Gautam Adani’s company Adani Enterprises Limited will be leased out three airports Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram belonging to Airport Authority of India (AAI) following the Union Cabient decision on Wednesday.
AEL will be taking charge of Operation, Management and Development. AEL was declared as the successful bidder in a Global Competitive Bidding conducted by the AAI, for fifty years, Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Prakash Javadekar said after the Cabinet meeting here.
Government had leased out the AAI airports at Delhi and Mumbai on Public Private Partnership (PPP) for Operation, Management and Development about a decade ago, an official statement said.
In 2018, the Centre had decided to privatise six airports — in Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati. The operation, management and development of these aerodromes were to be handled through the public-private partnership model. Last year, Adani won the bids to develop and run all the six AAI airports following a competitive bidding process.
Concession agreements for Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Lucknow were signed in February this year.
Explaining the rationale for leasing out airports, an official statement said, “Revenue received by AAI from PPP partners enabled AAI to create infrastructure facilities in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and also to upgrade their airports to international standards. Therefore, Government decided to lease out more airports of AAI for Operation, Management and Development under PPP through Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC). Government also constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) to decide on any issue falling beyond the scope of PPPAC.”