With just 10 days to go for commissioning the greenfield airports at Hyderbad and Bangalore, the parliamentary standing committee on transport has unanimously shot down the proposal.
Standing committee against closure of old airports at B’lore and Hyderabad
NEW DELHI: With just 10 days to go for commissioning the greenfield airports at Hyderbad and Bangalore, the parliamentary standing committee on transport has unanimously shot down the proposal to close the old airports in the two cities.
The committee has urged the government to scrap the clause in the agreement with the private parties which stipulates closure of the two airports and renegotiate the deal.
The report was tabled in both Houses of parliament on Wednesday. Though the recommendations are not binding on the government, they have boosted the morale of the Airports Authority of India Employees Association which had threatened an agitation from March 10 protesting the move to shut the two airports. The agitation will affect 125 airports across the country.
“The committee felt it was very unfortunate that the government was closing the airports built using taxpayers’ money and allowing those built by private players whose sole motive was earning profit rather than service to the passenger,” Sitaram Yechury, chairman of the committee, told the media after tabling the report. The panel said “the estimates and projections were made on the basis of 1999 and 2000 statistics when the civil aviation sector was growing at 6% per annum but today it is growing at 20% per annum. Actually, it was an underestimated by gigantic proportions.”
If the present trend continues, in a couple of years even the new airports will not be able to handle the rush. The greenfield airport at Bangalore is designed to handle passenger traffic of nine million per year, but in 2007 itself this figure stood at 9.9 million. The initial projected capacity for Hyderabad stood at seven million and in 2007 itself passenger traffic was 6.8 million.
The panel said the AAI had envisaged levy of user development fee of Rs300 per passenger as prescribed initial rate of return was not being achieved. The government turned down the proposal. However, it allowed the private players to levy user development fees.
The committee expressed the fear that once the AAI is rendered sick, the government may sell it to private players.
Giving another reason for keeping the old airports operational, Yechury said a Hyderabad resident will need two hours to reach the new airport, whereas it takes only half-an-hour to reach Bangalore by air. So the passenger has to shell out a bigger taxi fare. He has also to pay Rs700 to the private operators. In short, the passenger ends up paying more than the flight charges between Hyderabad-Bangalore for taxi and user development fees.
k_benedict@dnaindia.net
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