Chennai: The Madras High Court’s Division Bench today directed the Union of India and Ministry of Civil Aviation to file a reply to the Petition filed by the workers’ union of Chennai Airport which is protesting the government’s decision to privatise the airport. The development comes at time when eight private players including the Tata, GMR, GVK and Siemens have visited the airport last week to take stock of the facility.
R Maheshwari, Senior Central Government Standing Counsel, who took notice on behalf of the Civil Aviation Ministry, said that the Division Bench comprising Justice S K Agnihotri and Justice M Venugopal has directed the central government, which was represented by G Rajagopalan Additional Solicitor General of India, and the Ministry of Civil Aviation to file a counter in the Amendment Petition sought by the petitioner (the workers union) to amend the old Request for Qualification (RFQ) dated September 2, 2013 to that of new RFQ December 30, 2014.
Senior Counsel V Prakash, who represented the workers’ union, argued that while the union will not be able to oppose the policy decision of the Government, the employees want their rights to be protected.
Maheswari said that in RFQ there is a clause to protect the employee rights, but it is premature to list out the specifics of these rights, on the event of management change at this point of time, she said.
When the matter came of hearing today, the Bench posted the matter for March 20, 2015 after directing the Government and Civil Aviation Ministry to file a counter.
Recently, eight companies visited the Chennai Airport based on requests the Airport Authority received in February. The visit was restricted to representatives of applicants who have purchased the RFQ document. A pre-application conference was held on February 11 for operation, management and development of Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Jaipur Airports through Public Private Partnership (PPP).
In all, there were eight prospective applicants’ representatives from companies such as Siemens Project Ventures GmbH, GVK Airport Holdings, GMR Airport Holdings, Egis Avia, Celebi Aviation, Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited, Pithavadian and Partners, Flemingo Intl. Ltd. have visited last week and they were shown the facility and also had Airport authorities held discussions.
The RFQ is expected to be opened later this month and the documents would be published, putting the details of the evaluations done by the players in the public domain. The requests are then to be cleared by the government, as per the procedure, according to a senior official from the Airport Authority of India.
During the visit, airport officials explained the potential of the facility, including that of commercialising the land available with the Airports Authority. According to information available, the PPP model will be executed through a special purpose vehicle.
Airport employees have been protesting the move to privatise the facility, after it was refurbished with an investment of around Rs 2,015 crore. There also have been allegations about the sub-standard work in modernisation and upgradation, which has left the facility lacking in international standards. According to earlier reports, the ministry itself has said that the maintenance of the new terminal at the Chennai Airport is bad and the work done for upgradation of the airport is patchy and does not meet quality standards set at Delhi or Mumbai.
According to Airports Authority of India, the Chennai airport has seen a 9.4% increase in passengers between April and December 2014-15, at 1.06 crore passengers, both domestic and international, as compared to 97.29 lakh passengers during the same period of previous year. For a nine month period from April to December 2014, the aircraft movement numbers has seen an increase to 93,148 compared from 90,253 in the same period in 2013, an increase of 3.2%.
