Delhi, Mumbai airports running behind schedule, face penalties

New Delhi: The private managers of the airports at New Delhi and Mumbai, who are spending more than Rs5,000 crore to upgrade the two airports to meet a March 2010 deadline, are set to be penalized for delays in the execution of modernization projects, the civil aviation ministry said.
The ongoing delays, ranging between a few weeks for Delhi and up to six months for the Mumbai airport, raise the prospect that the two projects could miss the deadline of the much anticipated Commonwealth Games, scheduled for October 2010, according to one independent analyst.
The airports in the two metros, which handle more than half of India’s air-passenger traffic, which was about 32 million passengers in 2006, were given on a 30-year lease to private consortia.
Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), the consortium in charge of airport modernization in the capital, is led by Hyderabad business house GMR Group. Meanwhile, the GVK Group, also led from Hyderabad, was awarded the Mumbai International Airport Ltd (Mial) contract.
Under an “operations, management and development agreement” with the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the regulator that looks after airport development in the country, by the end of fiscal 2010, both operators are to execute about 32 mandatory “subprojects” each, including upgradation of passenger facilities, modern runways, new terminal buildings and other infrastructure. But work at both the airports is running behind schedule.
26/05/07 Tarun Shukla/Livemint

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Categories: Airports May 2007