The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) Thursday "strongly denounced" the government move to privatize 15 major airports through so called public-private-partnership route.
Reportedly, the process is to start with inviting global bids for six airports: Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and Guwahati.
"It is surprising that, in this beginning round, the government selected such airports to hand over to private hands which are having substantial commercial activities and higher revenue earnings," a CITU statement said.
CITU, affiliated to the CPI-M, said these were the airports where huge investments had been made by the government through the Airport Authority of India (AAI) for renovation and modernization.
"And now, handing over the management and control of those airports to private hands, both domestic and foreign ... (is) tantamount to transferring huge public asset virtually free of cost to private hands.
"Is the government entitled to fitter away public asset like that?
"This can no way be in the national interest must be stopped forthwith," CITU said.