Close to two years after the privatization of Guwahati, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram airports, Adani Group has signed concession agreements with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for their management, operations, and development.
In a press release, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said, “The concessionaires are required to take up the Guwahati, Jaipur and
Thiruvananthapuram airports fulfilling certain conditions precedents within 180 days from 19 January, 2021.”
In February 2019, the central government has privatized six major airports of the country - Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati. Adani Group had won the rights to run all of them for 50 years, following a competitive bidding process.
The airports in Lucknow, Ahmedabad and Mangaluru were handed over by Airports Authority of India in October and November 2020. "The concession fee that would be received by AAI after leasing out six airports will be used for the maintenance and development of other brownfield airports, and also for further development of RCS (regional connectivity scheme) and greenfield airports throughout the country,” said the AAI press release.
In September 2019, AAI had also recommended the central government to privatize airports at Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur, and Trichy. AAI Chairman Arvind Singh had said last month that privatization of these six airports would begin in the first quarter of 2021.