Adani Enterprises has signed the concession agreement with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for operating and developing the Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur and Guwahati airports. In a regulatory filing, the company said that the concession period is 50 years from the commercial operation date.
"Adani Jaipur International Airport Limited, Adani Guwahati International Airport and Adani Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company have signed the concession agreement on January 19, 2021 with Airports Authority of India for the operations, management and development of Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports respectively," it said.
AAI said in a tweet that it would receive the concession fee after leasing out six airports and will be used for the maintenance and development of other brownfield airports and also for further development of greenfield airports throughout the country.
Adani taking over the Trivandrum airport comes amidst strong opposition from the Kerala government. In November 2020, it approached the Supreme Court against the move after the Kerala High Court dismissed all petitions challenging the Union government’s decision to hand over the airport to the Adani group.
The state government, in its plea, said that the High Court failed to appreciate that the process of tender was vitiated for many reasons and one of the pre-qualification conditions that the tenderer should have previous experience in airport management for which previous experience of the state was not considered by the Centre.
Apart from the Kerala government opposing the move, it was also revealed that the finance Ministry and the NITI Aayog had raised concerns over the privatisation of six airports back in 2018. Concerns were raised over the bidding process, about one group or entity bidding for all six airports, the eligibility criteria and that many guidelines put in place for PPP projects were deviated from.
However, these concerns were not entirely addressed, and the in-principal and final nod was given for privatisation, paving way for Adani to bid, and take control of Trivandrum, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangalore, Jaipur, and Guwahati airports.
The announcement has boosted the shares of Adani Enterprises on Tuesday. At 1.53 p.m., the company’s shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange were Rs 525.20, higher by Rs 17.95 or 3.54% from its previous close.
With IANS inputs