Karipur: Karipur airport is likely to be privatized as part of the government’s airport-privatizing spree. As the procedures for privatizing six airports is in the last phase, the government is mulling over to put in the list ten more including Karipur Airport.
The international airports in the list are Karipur( Kerala) Thiruchirappalli, Coimbatore( Tamil Nadu), Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), Amritsar, ( Punjab), Bhubaneswar ( Odisha); while, domestic ones in the list are Raipur (Chhattisgarh), and (Jharkhand); others to join the list are customs airports: Patna( Bihar), Indoor( Madhyapradesh).
The key Infrastructure Development (KID), formed under airport authority of India, has started procedure for privatization. A meeting had been held in connection with this the other day. Airports are likely to be leased out for a particular period of time.
The new move comes at the last phase of privatization of airports like Thiruvanthanapuram, Lucknow, GuwahatiJaipur, Mangalore, and Ahmedabad.
Kerala government has raised stiff resistance against privatizing Thiruvananthapuram airport.
There are 125 airports functioning under Airport Authority of India, and seven of them are on private-public partnership.
Privatization of airport was first initiated in2006 during UPA government with privatizing Delhi and Mumbai airports.