With Leftists out of government’s hair, private parties may finally get to develop the terminal building at non-metro airports.
NEW DELHI: With Leftists out of government’s hair, private parties may finally get to develop the terminal building at non-metro airports.
But no such luck for interested bidders in the case of two metro airports of Kolkata and Chennai, where the government may go ahead with the Left stipulation of getting works done only by the state-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI).
After vehement objections by Left leaders a few months back, the civil aviation ministry had revised modernisation guidelines for airports at Amritsar and Udaipur to allow private participation only in minor city-side operations such as parking facilities, hotels etc.
All the remaining airport development works were to be carried out by AAI.
But with the changed political equations, the ministry is veering around to the view that the Delhi-Mumbai model of airport modernisation is good enough for non-metro airports also.
So instead of just parking and recreation facilities, private parties may, after all, get to bid for terminal development also.
A top ministry official said that the bids already called for the purpose are still valid and a decision should be taken in the next few weeks. Some of the top infrastructure developers are in the race for modernising Udaipur and Amritsar airports.
Consortia led by Reliance Energy, Fraport AG, Tata-Changi, Lanco and L&T have already been short listed as pre-qualified bidders for the Amritsar leg of modernisation. For Udaipur, the consortia shortlisted are led by Reliance Energy, Tata-Changi, L&T, Maytas Infra and GMR.
Coming to the Kolkata and Chennai airports, the official acknowledged that both these projects are already facing a six-month delay.
“When we had proposed that the entire modernisation works be carried out by AAI in these two cases, it was definitely due to Left’s insistence. But now, since the process is already delayed, any change in ground rules will only push it back further. Besides, it is good to have different models for developing major airports in the country since this helps introduce an element of competition among them. Delhi and Mumbai are under the PPP model, Hyderabad and Bangalore are greenfield private and we think the remaining two metro airports can be developed well by the AAI alone.”
The ministry has already decided that the AAI will get turnkey project contracts only in both Kolkata and Chennai with the master contractor taking care of all small jobs. While a new, world class airport will be ready in Kolkata by early 2011, Chennai can boast of it a little earlier in 2010.
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