The Mangaluru airport has been leased out to the Adani group for the next 50 years. With this, the Adani group now has acquired over six major airports including Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur, Mangaluru, and Guwahati.
After an intense bidding process, the government handed over the rights of the airport to the Adani group. On Saturday, in the official statement, the Airport Authority of India said, “In accordance with concession agreement executed on February 14, 2020, AAI handed over handling of Mangaluru @aaimlrairport to @AdaniOnline on lease for 50 years. Exchange of symbolic key held at midnight 00:00 hrs on October 30, 2020.”
The Central Government has been going for privatising airports to attract investments and increase competitiveness in the aviation sector.
While some states were open to the idea of the privatisation of airports, this move was met with a lot of flak in some other states. In Kerala for instance, the decision to make the Thiruvananthapuram airport was met with a lot of protest and dissent from the ruling party and the politicians in the state. Disapproving of the move, the state’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had written a letter to the Centre saying that it had ignored repeated requests from Kerala for entrusting the airport to a special purpose vehicle, with the state as a major stakeholder.