Adani Group to officially take over Mangaluru, Lucknow and Ahmedabad airport operations
The Adani group on Thursday informed that it would be taking over the operations, management and development of the airports at Mangaluru, Lucknow and Ahmedabad from the AAI by October 31, November 2 and November 11, respectively. In its release, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said that the Aviation Ministry has signed MoUs (memorandums of understanding) with three entities of the Adani group to provide services like customs, immigration and security at the aforementioned three airports.
The central government privatised six major airports -- Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, and Guwahati -- in February 2019. After a competitive bidding process, Adani Enterprises won the rights to run all of them.
"The AAI and concessionaires of Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru airports will be completing conditions precedents as prescribed in the concession agreements and the concessionaires will be taking over the operations, management and development of airports as under: Mangaluru airport : 31.10.2020; Lucknow airport : 02.11.2020; Ahmedabad airport : 07.11.2020," the AAI press release was quoted as saying by PTI.
In July 2019, the Union Cabinet had approved the proposal for leasing out three airports - Mangaluru, Lucknow and Ahmedabad - to Adani Enterprises. On August 19 this year, the Union Cabinet approved the proposal for leasing out the other three airports to the Ahmedabad-based group.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation signed three MoUs with "Adani Ahmedabad International Airport Limited, Adani Lucknow International Airport Limited and Adani Mangaluru International Airport Limited" on Wednesday at the AAI's corporate headquarters, the press release said.
The MoUs are in connection with provision of services i.e. customs, immigration, plant and animal quarantine, health, MeT (meteorological data) and security (collectively called as Reserved Services), the press release mentioned.
"Simultaneously, the AAI also signed three separate CNS-ATM Agreements with concessionaires for the provision of CNS-ATM services at these three airports," the press release noted. CNS/ATM stands for Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management.
(WIth PTI inputs)
