House panel civil aviation secretary

New Delhi: The parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture has asked civil aviation secretary Ashok Chawla to attend a meeting of the committee scheduled to take place on May 22 on the modernisation of non-metro airports. As the civil aviation secretary is on tour to the United States, the ministry is likely to be represented by an additional secretary. Civil aviation joint secretary K.N. Srivastava (who deals with airport modernisation) is also abroad on an official tour.
The government had earlier decided to permit private-public participation (PPP) in the development of city-side areas of 24 of the 35 non-metro airports being developed. The aeronautical side is to be developed solely by the state-run Airports Authority of India (AAI).
However, a controversy has arisen over what constitutes city-side development and whether this includes the airport terminal building or not. The chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture is CPM MP Sitaram Yechury. It may be recalled that Mr Yechury had recently written a protest letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, stating that the Centre was discarding the agreed-upon plan to undertake the airport-side development including the airport terminal by the AAI while allowing the PPP in the city-side development sphere.
The protest letter was written by Mr Yechury after a recent meeting of the inter-ministerial-group (comprising bureaucrats from the civil aviation ministry, finance ministry and the Planning Commission officials) on the modernisation of non-metro airports. It is believed that some officials argued that city-side development included the airport terminal building as well.
19/05/08 Howrah News Service

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General May 2008