Mangaluru: On Wednesday September 1, the Karnataka High Court reserved its judgement on a plea filed by the Airports Authority Employees’ Union against the Government’s decision to handover the operations of Mangaluru International Airport to Adani Enterprises.
The petition was seeking the Court to quash the Cabinet decision in 2019 approving the bid of Adani Enterprises Limited for three airports including Mangaluru.
There is no revenue sharing with the government, the entire fixation of the lease is on per passenger fee, pointed out Senior Advocate Ashok Haranahalli. Even the revenue derived from leasing airport space is not shared with the government, he added. Although it is called a Public-Private partnership project, there is no revenue generated for the formulation of PPP partnership. The airport is given to a third party, which is not in consonance with the policy of the Public-Private Partnership model, he argued.
He has also stated the fact that the runways and taxiways and aircraft rescue fire buildings are also leased out.
Opposing the petition Additional Solicitor General M. B. Nargund appearing for the Union Government raised the question of maintainability and argued that the government thought that in order to generate funds for the new establishment of secondary and tertiary airports, every time it is practically difficult for the government to allot funds, instead of that a system has been developed, wherein the money which is generated from here (leasing of the airports), the AAI will use this particular money for the purpose of creating new airports.
