Review agreement with DIAL: CPI to Govt

The CPI has asked the government to review and rescind the agreement with the GMR-led Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) alleging that it was charging development fee from air travellers to build the airport, where the conditions were "appalling".

"Review and rescind the agreement. This agreement is oppressive and was written to favour the private operator against public interest. Government should issue a show-cause notice to GMR and rescind the agreement", CPI National Secretary D Raja said, adding "let the courts intervene and hopefully they will protect the public interest".

"I am sure that you would have noticed the sad state of Delhi Airport. When government handed over Delhi airport to private operators, the excuse was that Airports Authority of India was an inefficient entity" and private enterprises were needed to help modernize airports, he said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Maintaining that "architects and experts agree that this is a badly designed airport", Raja said the "general consensus" was that Government "gave away too much to the private operator GMR" which collected "hundreds of crores" from the public through user fees (UDF) to build the airport.

Claiming that the design of the new terminal T3 was "flawed", he said government should "not hesitate to pass strictures and re-design the airport".

In the five-page letter, he said the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority(AERA) has "only shown any inclination to favour the private operators" and "there is not a single instance of the AERA intervening for the public".

"There seems to be a strategy to raise user charges by fictitious argument and then conceding the demands of the private airport operators", he said, adding that AERA has "indeed encouraged" hiking of UDF in airports like Hyderabad.

Observing that domestic and international terminals should "never" have been in the same building, he claimed that such a design might have "made more room for the real estate ambitions of GMR" as it would remain a "mess" for years.

He detailed the "appalling conditions" at the airport and the "miserable plight" of passengers and others there.

The CPI leader also claimed that the AAI, DGCA, the Civil Aviation Ministry and other agencies "keep off the GMR- managed airport (as) they do not have the nerve to raise issues affecting GMR and his airport. Fears of transfers keeps officials quiet. I have been told in confidence that GMR Delhi airport is off limits for officials".

Noting that "thousands of crores" has been collected from passengers as UDF, he said, "GMR used this money to build the airport. This money was used as a margin to get loans from banks. No money was generated by GMR".

"Therefore, user development charges should be turned into equity and handed over to AAI" and not the GMR, he said, demanding that this "serious issue" should be probed by the AERA, SEBI and Finance Ministry.