A long Twitter thread posted by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on why the lease to run Thiruvananthapuram airport for 50 years went to a private operator and not the Kerala government has been endorsed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
The Civil Aviation Minister tweeted the Kerala government didn't qualify in the international bidding process for Thiruvananthapuram airport and the lease went to Adani Enterprises, which will run the facility in public-private partnership mode.
"This thread is quite accurate. GoK (government of Kerala) chose to participate in the bidding, under rules they agreed, and after losing in the fair process, started questioning the very game they had chosen to play. What really matters is the interests of the travellers of Thiruvananthapuram, not the government's," tweeted Mr Tharoor, whose constituency is Thiruvananthapuram.
Mr Tharoor said his position on the airport that a public-private partnership would work well has been "consistent". "My position on the airport has been consistent since before the elections. I am not a politician who says one thing to the voters and something else afterwards for political convenience..." Mr Tharoor tweeted.
The Left government in the state and the Congress-led United Democratic Front have opposed the move, and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the decision overlooked Kerala's repeated requests that the airport's operations and management be transferred to a special purpose vehicle in which the state government is a major stakeholder.
Backing the centre's move, Mr Tharoor tweeted, "The reality is that a private entity running the operations competitively is the only way this airport could flourish. Whoever it is, the ownership of land and airport as well as the responsibilities of ATC (air traffic control), security, customs and immigration still remains with government agencies."
In February last year, Adani Enterprises was declared the winner to run six airports as it was the highest bidder. In July 2019, the centre approved the proposal for leasing out three of them - Ahmedabad, Mangalore and Lucknow - to the Ahmedabad-based company.
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