Airport makeover: No takeoff in sight for Adani operations

On August 19, the Union Cabinet approved the leasing out of three airports — Jaipur, Guwahati, and Thiruvananthapuram — belonging to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to Adani Enterprises. However, the government did not state by when it would sign the concession agreement with the company for the handover to take place. This is crucial because Adani Enterprises had in March cited force majeure clause and sought time till February 15, 2021, to take charge of the operations, maintenance and development of the earlier three airports — Mangaluru, Ahmedabad, and Lucknow — for which the concession agreements were signed in February this year. Adani Enterprises had won the bids for these airports under the private-public-partnership route in February 2019.