Warring fronts unite for Trivandrum airport cause

Thiruvananthapuram: The state assembly passed a unanimous resolution urging the Centre to reconsider its decision on leasing out the Trivandrum International Airport to Adani Group. It has urged the Centre to hand over the airport to a special purpose vehicle in which the state government has majority stake.
While presenting the resolution in the House, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said for the last two years, the state government has been opposing the move to hand over the airport to private players. “I had written twice to the Prime Minister on this. The state government had also informed that it was ready to offer the amount quoted by the private player. However, all our pleas were totally ignored,” Vijayan said.
The state is well-experienced in running airports successfully with public-private-partnership. Cial and Kial are the examples for this. Hence, it had requested to consider this while handing over the Thiruvananthapuram airport. However, now the Centre has selected a bidder that has no experience in this field.
The Centre’s decision is against the interest of the people and this was communicated to the PM after the Centre took the decision. The government has also made it clear that it was not ready to cooperate with the private player if the airport was handed over to them.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said, “Despite the differences, the opposition has decided to support the resolution.”
However, he alleged that the government was having double standards while dealing with the Adani group. The government attacked the Adani group in public but had secretly helped them by consulting a law firm close to it. There was criminal conspiracy behind approaching this law firm having links with the Adani group, he said.
He also asked why Cial (Cochin International Airport Ltd) was not appointed as consultant. “A conspiracy has been held to help the Adani group. However, keeping in mind the state’s interests, the opposition is supporting the resolution and we agree with its spirit,” he said.
In reply to this, the chief minister said the government’s stand on the airport is an open book. The firm had only done legal vetting and had no role in deciding the amount quoted by the state in the bidding process, he said.
However, the BJP alleged that the resolution was not unanimous as their representative in the House, O Rajagopal, was not allowed to speak.