The Centre is not, for now, taking forward the plan to privatise the Calicut International Airport.
According to M.K. Raghavan, Kozhikode MP, an assurance to this effect has been given by Union Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri.
Mr. Raghavan said in a press note that he had, at a meeting with the Minister on Tuesday, urged the latter to drop the privatisation move. Mr. Raghavan pointed out to Mr. Puri that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) Chairman had, at a recent press conference, floated the idea of privatising more airports.
Mr. Raghavan told the Minister that Calicut airport, run by the AAI, was a profit-making one and that last year, it had generated a profit of ₹120 crore in spite of the two-year-long partial shutdown for repairs that heavily affected traffic.
The press release said that the Minister had called a meeting of Kerala's Members of Parliament on Thursday to discuss the privatisation of the Thiruvananthapuram airport.
At a news conference in Delhi on Friday last, AAI Chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra had hinted that the Calicut airport would be included in the next phase of privatisation.
He said that the government planned to privatise “20-25 major airports with an annual passenger traffic between one million and 1.5 million”.
While several groups and political parties in Kerala have opposed the proposal, some associations of passengers have urged the authorities to privatise the Calicut airport too so that it could be developed further and the passengers would get better amenities.
3 airports leased
The Union government had recently leased three airports—Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangalore--to the Adani group.
Three more—Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram—are expected to be leased out soon. However, because of the opposition by the Pinarayi Vijayan government, the privatisation process of Thiruvananthapuram is in trouble.
