All airports will get equal benefit of new aviation policy: HC

The Delhi High Court said today that exclusion of existing airports which are run under public-private partnership (PPP) from the benefit of liberalised use of land under the new civil aviation policy was unconstitutional.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said that the classification drawn between the existing PPP airports and future PPP airports in the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) 2016 violates the right to equality provided in the Constitution.
"We hold that clause 12(d) of NCAP 2016 to the extent of excluding 'existing PPP airports' is ultra vires Article 14 of the Constitution of India," it said.

Under NCAP 2016, which came into effect from June last year, existing airports such as Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport were restricted from commercially utilising their land for providing non-aeronautical services like bank ATMs, hotels, motels, general retail shops, etc.
The court directed the Centre to take necessary steps to extend the benefit of liberalised use of airport land as per NCAP 2016 to the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) in respect of IGI Airport on par with the existing and future airports of Airport Authority of India (AAI).
The order came on a plea of DIAL, a joint venture between AAI and GMR Group, which had challenged its exclusion under the aviation policy.

Setting aside DIAL's exclusion from liberalised use of the land allocated to it for the airport, the bench said that liberalising the end use of the airport land and unlocking the potential of the same was to advance the public interest and to better manage the airport.

It said the Centre had "apparently failed to notice" that denial of the benefit of liberalisation to the existing PPP airports "would manifestly be against public interest".
"Such exclusion of existing PPP airports from the benefit of liberalisation of land use therefore apparently suffers from the vice of arbitrariness," the bench said.
It said that such an exclusion of existing PPP airports "would be completely arbitrary and discriminatory".

It also said, in its 41-page judgment, that excluding such airports was against larger public interest as the economic activity in the vicinity of the existing PPP airports would remain stagnant.
It would also deprive the passengers of the benefits that they would get in other PPP airports which did not face such restrictions or exclusions.
"In the present case, NCAP 2016 is with reference to the entire aviation sector in India. Therefore, the existing PPP airports cannot be treated differently from future PPP airports," the bench said.
The court also rejected as "untenable" the Centre's claim that giving the benefit of liberalised land use to DIAL and existing PPP airports would amount to a post-bid benefit and altering the clauses of Operation Management Development Agreement (OMDA) signed with AAI.

"In fact, we found that there is no such embargo under OMDA," the bench said.