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Mr Ajay Prasad, Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation (left), with Mr Cyrus Guzder, Chairman, CII National Committee on Civil Aviation, on his way to attend a conference on `Transport infrastructure & logistics network' in the Capital on Wednesday. — Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi , Feb. 2

THE Government will introduce a Bill in the forthcoming session of Parliament for creating the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA), the Secretary Civil Aviation, Mr Ajay Prasad, said today on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The creation of an independent regulator is likely to provide greater comfort level to those investing in the restructuring of the airports at Delhi and Mumbai as also the upcoming greenfield airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad. The regulator is to look at a variety of issues, including fixing tariff for both aeronautic and non-aeronautic charges at these airports.

Commenting on the proposed restructuring programme at Delhi and Mumbai airport, Mr Prasad said that the short-listed bidders would be provided the Request for Proposal (RFP) document by the end of this month.

"In the case of Delhi, we hope to select the consortium for restructuring the airport by August this year. Within nine months of the partner being selected we hope to get details of what is planned. They should be able to start work on the project by middle of next year and the first phase should be ready by 2009, well before Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games," Mr Prasad said.

The Government has short-listed nine entities including Reliance, GMR, DLF, Bharati and L&T for the proposed modernisation and restructuring of the two metro airports. It is proposed to provide the bidders with the initial development programme that is to be based on what the Government feels the new airport should be in the future. But bidders will be at liberty to come up with their own plans for the two airports. While the plan for Delhi would include combining both the domestic and international, in Mumbai it is proposed to have high-speed taxi-way and parallel runways.

The Secretary added that the Government had also appointed two groups of financial and technical consultants to upgrade 25 non-metro airports.

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Govt plans Bill to set up independent airport regulator

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