Entrust ops of 35 non-metro airport terminals with AAI: Panel

Flaying the Planning Commission and other agencies for "violating" decisions of the Prime Minister's Infrastructure Committee, a Parliamentary panel today asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to entrust commercial operations of terminals at 35 non-metro airports with AAI.     

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Tourism, Transport and Culture, headed by CPI(M) MP Sitaram Yechury, also sought a clarification from the Prime Minister's Office whether it had approved these "deviations" and whether it would intervene in the matter "to ensure that the commercial operations of the terminal buildings was done by AAI itself".     

Noting that the Prime Minister's panel had in June 2006 decided that modernisation of non-metro airports, including their terminals, would be handled by the state-run AAI, the Parliamentary panel said the Plan body had brought terminal buildings "slyly" out of the AAI ambit for development through private-public partnership (PPP) route.     

"The Committee feels that this is a deviation from the decision of the Committee on Infrastructure (CoI). It fails to understand how the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) headed by the Civil Aviation Secretary can deviate the decisions/directions of the CoI headed by the Prime Minister," Yechury told reporters after submitting the Committee's report to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari today.     
The committee "expects PMO to issue a clarification in this regard, if the IMG had its approval for deviating from the CoI and, if not, it must intervene in this matter to ensure that the commercial operations of the terminal buildings was done by the AAI itself."