Newstrack

11 non-metro airports to miss modernisation bus for land crunch

Raghvendra Rao - New Delhi

Due to non-availability of land, only 24 non-metro airports, out of the total 35 being modernised, will witness city-side development through the public-private-partnership (PPP) route. The ones likely to miss the bus include Agatti, Agra, Chandigarh, Jammu, Pune, Dehradun, Goa, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Port Blair and Udaipur.

Aiming to complete the city-side development works by 2010, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has appointed two consultants - UTI Bank, Mumbai and Capital Fortunes, Hyderabad - to assist them in selecting joint-venture partners. AAI is targeting a December 2007 deadline to complete the process of selecting the joint-venture partners for individual airports or cluster of airports.

The UTI Bank will assist AAI in selecting JV partners for 12 airports in the northern, eastern and the north-eastern region while Capital Fortunes would assist for the remaining 12 airports in western and southern region.

AAI sources said that airports at Agatti, Agra, Chandigarh, Jammu, Pune and Dehradun are not likely to be put up for bidding because of acute land unavailability. Also, the airports at Goa, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Port Blair and Udaipur are not likely to see any immediate city-side development because of shortage of land.

Goa has only 4.63 acres of land available for commercial exploitation, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Port Blair and Udaipur have 3, 2.79, 2.4 and 1.67 acres respectively.

The civil aviation ministry has defined city-side development as construction of hotels, convention centres, food court, flight kitchens, petrol pumps, hospitals, shopping malls, hyper marts, golf courses and cargo warehouses. While the AAI is undertaking that airside development of all the 35 non-metro airports, including terminal buildings, the city-side development has to be done through PPPs.

Meanwhile, the AAI has already awarded the works for the terminal buildings at 13 airports and airside works (runway, taxiway, apron, fire station, control tower, isolation bay) for 19 airports. AAI is aiming to complete all works associated with terminal buildings at Pune, Agatti, Nagpur, Udaipur, Jaipur, Vizag, Trichy, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Dehradun and Agra within the current financial year.