Eleven airports across the country - two of them small airports - have been identified for operations under the public-private partnership, the Civil Aviation Ministry has said. The list includes the airports at Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.
"Eleven airports consisting of select five airports -- Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Trichy -- clubbed/paired with six (6) smaller airports have been identified for their operation, management and development under Public Private Partnership (PPP)," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on Monday.
25 airports operated by the state-owned Airports Authority of India have been earmarked for leasing over the 2022-2025 period under the National Monetisation Pipeline - the roadmap to identify and monetise the country's underutilized public infrastructure assets. It aims fund new infrastructure projects using the revenue with the participation of the private sector.
Currently, there are 159 operational airports in the country.
The Delhi High Court, meanwhile, has issued a notice to the Centre after the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) filed a petition challenging the government's decision to permit commercial flights from Ghaziabad's Hindon Airbase.
DIAL claimed that allowing commercial operations at Hindon could cut down on IGIA's financial viability, while the airport has been struggling with rising costs. It also argued that the use of Hindon air base violates the rule about two airports being separated by at least 150 km unless there is a passenger demand.
