It is business as usual at the Delhi and Mumbai airports which passed into private hands earlier this week with airline officials and passengers still to feel any change in their travel experiences.
Some cosmetic changes have come about in Delhi but there has been no perceptible improvement. The change in management has not resulted in any change in the officials who were managing the airports under the old regime and passengers are still going through the same inconveniences that they were experiencing earlier, a senior official of a low cost airline said.
The management of the two metro airports passed into private hands at mid-night May 3.
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NEW DELHI - Two private consortia on Thursday formally took over the management of Indias Delhi and Mumbai airports ending a three-month transition period.
The joint venture by Bangalore-based GMR - which includes Frankfurt airport manager Fraport, a Malaysian airports subsidiary and an Indian fund as its partners - took over the management of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi from the state-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI).
The Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Indias commercial hub Mumbai was taken over by another consortium led by GVK Industries based in the southern city of Hyderabad. GVK has hooked up with
Indias aviation boom has forced the Government to modernise airports with private participation. But the Government still wants to play Big Brother, by putting in place a regulatory authority to keep a watch over private airports in places such as Kochi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
On Thursday, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel will place before the Cabinet a proposal for an Airport Economic Regulatory Authority with wide-ranging powers.
▪ The body will determine the tariff structure the airports charges for different services
▪ The authority will also monitor the performance of the private airports, ensuring they maintain the required standards for
The Delhi High Court today dismissed the petition by the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Airport Developers challenging the governments decision to award contracts for the modernisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports to GMR-Frafort and GVK-ACS, respectively.
There is in our opinion complete transparency in the decision leading to the modification of the Request for Proposal (RFP) in the tender and uniformity in its application to the bidders who qualified in the process, said the 127-page order by a Division Bench comprising Justice Tirath Singh Thakur and Justice BN Chaturvedi.
A number of factors can contribute to mitigating the inflationary pressure as well as balance of payments concerns.
My last column (Macro Manoeuvrings, June 5) recommended that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) not raise interest rates in response to the stock market and exchange rate turbulence. Of course, three days later, rates were raised, in step with the actions of central banks around the world. The US Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates in end-June and the RBI is expected to raise its benchmark rates again in its quarterly announcement in end-July.
Going beyond the immediate
NEW DELHI : State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) on Tuesday marked its entry into the national long-distance market by cutting rates on MTNL to MTNL land line calls between Delhi and Mumbai by 80%. MTNL is the largest land line player in Delhi and Mumbai with a total of 3.8 million subscribers.
Effective June 1, a call between Delhi and Mumbai on the MTNL network will be treated as local and will be charged at Rs 1.20 per three minutes against Rs 5.70 per three minutes charged now. Other operators are expected to follow suit to remain competitive