Bhubaneswar: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has decided to lease out airports at 25 places in the country including the Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar.
Stating this in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Monday, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh said the airports will be leased during 3-year period from 2022 to 2025.
The airports operating under AAI are leased out to private management for better management. The private partners would operate, manage and develop the leased airports under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The whole process aims at ensuring better infrastructure and facilities for the benefit of passengers, the minister said.
He further said the airports, which have been earmarked for lease under National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), include Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi, Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.
The AAI has already leased out eight airports under PPP mode. Those include Indira Gandhi International Airport at Delhi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at Mumbai, Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport at Lucknow, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at Ahmedabad, Mangaluru International Airport, Jaipur International Airport, Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram International Airport.
