The GMR-led consortium, which manages Delhi’s IGI Airport, has challenged the centre’s decision to start commercial flights from Hindon IAF station in the Delhi High Court. It says three airports, including the new one coming up at Jewar, would hit revenues of all three
By Vikram Kilpady
How many airports are too many for a city? The Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), a joint venture between a consortium led by the GMR Group and the Airports Authority of India (AAI), has moved the Delhi High Court against commercial flight operations at the Hindon IAF station, Ghaziabad. The AAI had put out a communique inviting airlines to increase flight ops and file their flight schedule for slots at Hindon. The Ministry of Civil Aviation had okayed the proposal in October last year. If all this goes through, the NCR will have three airports—Palam (Indira Gandhi International Airport), Jewar and Hindon. The National Capital Region’s second airport is coming up in Jewar and is expected to be operational in December 2024. The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) at Palam, Delhi, is managed by DIAL. It operates and maintains the IGIA.
Upon DIAL’s legal challenge, Justice Subramonium Prasad issued notice to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the AAI, and set the next hearing for March. The DIAL petition contended that the decision is unfair and unsustainable, apart from being arbitrary as it fails the tests of the 1997 policy, the National Civil Aviation Policy, 2016, and the Greenfield Airport Policy.
The policy doesn’t allow setting up greenfield airports within 150 km of an existing airport. It added that an airport is already coming up within 150 km of IGIA at Jewar and is expected to see 100 million passengers per annum (mppa). This capacity along with that of the IGIA takes it to 250 mppa and is projected to be sufficient till 2050. It said allowing the Hindon IAF station for commercial flights would seriously impact IGIA, this is even before either IGIA or the Jewar facility have reached saturation capacity. Operations are yet to launch in Jewar, as of now.
DIAL said three airports for the same catchment area will end up making each of them unviable because of their competing against each other and whittling down individual revenue. DIAL said it had spent a large sum of money for IGIA expansion, which had as a result led to an exponential increase in passenger capacity. The centre had been unilateral in coming up with the decision and had not even allowed DIAL to place its objections to the proposal, the petition said.
DIAL said it had consented to a memorandum of understanding using Hindon when IGIA upgradation was going on and for limited purpose for certain flights under the Regional Air Connectivity Scheme (RACS). The Scheme, also known as UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik), a centre-backed plan to improve infrastructure and connectivity in India, especially in remote and neglected regions, completes six years. UDAN is a vital component of the National Civil Aviation Policy 2016. With the upgradation set to be completed in March 2024, DIAL said the authorities decided to expand the scope of ops at Hindon without honouring their obligations as per the MoU.
Faulting the process, DIAL said opening another greenfield airport at Hindon should have been through a competitive bidding process which has been followed for most airports in the country. Under the terms of the 2006 privatisation agreement, when airports were given over to private entities with foreign consultants to make India’s airports swank, DIAL had committed to paying 45.99% of its annual revenue as concession fees to AAI.
Following the Covid shutdown and the airline industry grinding to a halt, DIAL had moved tribunals and courts to exempt itself from payments due that were hit in the no-flight national shutdown. Though DIAL has control over the Palam airport till 2036, a tribunal had extended its tenure by another year and 11 months. The UDAN scheme is in its sixth year of existence. A Press Information Bureau handout listed its key achievements ever since its launch in 2017, with a flight connecting Shimla and Delhi inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With the focus firm on Tier-II and Tier-III cities, it sought to improve their air connectivity as well as to make an effort to boost tourism to the hinterland.
In the first year of the UDAN scheme, 36 newly made airports were made operational and 128 flight routes were opened to 70 airports, including the new facilities mentioned above. In the second, 73 neglected and unserved airports were announced along with helipads. The third and fourth years saw a push for tourism especially in the Northeast and general improvement in the eight states there. The fifth and current phase has seen the removal of the former 600-km distance cap for flights.
The Modi government has been on a rampage of sorts with infrastructure projects. While a lot is made of the lack of infrastructure in the early years of independent India, it needs to be remembered that the prerogatives of the 1950s and the 1960s were with state-owned public sector undertakings, and their priority was food self-sufficiency. The Green Revolution made India a food sufficient nation, but that too in the decades that followed. Infrastructure has found its turn in the spotlight now. Partisan accounts on social media fault the government for taking unnecessary debt on its head without any heed to the fiscal deficit. The government has also responded to such claims and dismissed them as baseless.
DIAL may have its commercial reasons to protest against commercial flights at Hindon. But the plight of air passengers during the winter months and during peak tourist season is pitiable. Social media is replete with the incident of a passenger assaulting a pilot over an excessively delayed flight. That passenger had no right to take the law into his own hands, but garnered public sympathy in view of the inordinate delays due to either the fog or a runway choked with flights ready for take-off. Similarly, in another incident, the passengers of a long-delayed flight downed their refreshments on the Mumbai airport runway and apron area as a mark of protest. The DGCA issued notice to the airline for the lapse.
The centre may just be in its right mind to allow more airports, and it is for the courts to rule on the DIAL petition.