Rubbishing report, Aviation Ministry clarifies that privatisation of 6 airports done in competitive and transparent manner

The Ministry of Civil Aviation, in a clarification, has said that the privatisation of six airports viz. Ahmedabad, Mangalore, Lucknow, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram was conducted in a “competitive and transparent” manner, with 32 bids having been received from 10 different entities during the bidding process.

The Ministry was responding to a report in a newspaper titled “Finance Ministry and Niti Aayog had raised red flags before Adani’s clean sweep of six airports”published on January 15.

The Ministry further said that the assertion made in the article was “factually incorrect”. On the objections raised by both Ministry of Finance and Niti Aayog about the bidding process, the Ministry said that an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGOS) took a conscious decision not to put any restrictions on the number of airports to be bid or to be awarded to a single entity given that the six airports handled only 9.5 per cent of the passenger traffic.

On the issue of ignoring the recommendations of Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) and Niti Aayog, the statement from the Ministry noted that both these agencies were represented in the EGOS where the issues were deliberated.

The concession agreement for Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports, the Ministry said was signed on January 19, 2021 and not September 2020 when the Letter of Award for these three airports had been issued by the Airports Authority of India.