Home

Back to Index

Court upholds airport modernisation
by Ashok Sah

        New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed the petition of Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Airport Developers and upheld the Government's stand on the tendering process for the modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports. A High Court Bench, comprising Justice Tirath Singh Thakur and Justice B N Chaturvedi, termed the Government's role during whole bidding process as fair. Upholding the Government's decision during the tendering process, the court said that the Government's action "was in no way discriminatory, illogical or illegal". The court also made it clear that the Government was fully competent to amend or variate the tendering process. Talking to reporters soon after judgement, GVK's (the company given the Bombay airport's modernisation task) counsel Ankur Chawla said, "Hon'ble High Court has given a clean chit to the tendering process regarding the airports and has dismissed the writ petition filed by Reliance group challenging the award of tender to GMR and GVK for Delhi and Bombay respectively." "HC has clearly held that there was no arbitrariness, the whole process was fair and equal opportunity was given to all the parties, including Reliance before the bids were awarded to GVK and GMR," he added.

      However, allowing a chance to the Reliance group to file an appeal to the Supreme Court, the Bench has ordered that the winner consortia would not claim any equity or implement the contract during the next two weeks. On April 3, the Delhi HC had declined the Reliance Airport developers' plea for a stay on the proposed transfer of ownership of Delhi and Mumbai Airports by the Airports Authority of India to winning bidders -- GMR-Fraport and GVK-ACS. On March 22, the court had heard the arguments of the petitioner, the Government and the winning bidders. Reliance-ADA had challenged the Government's decision to award the Delhi and Mumbai airport modernisation projects to GMR and GVK, respectively. The Government already has started work on upgrading two other metro airports, also through the JV route involving private sector developers. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is expected to sign the operation, management and development agreement (OMDA) with its private joint venture partners this week. The OMDA is the mother document, under which AAI grants the right to undertake functions, including operations, maintenance, development, design, construction and management to the joint venture companies. It is for an initial term of 30 years, extendable by as many years.
-April 30,  2006

List of Leading Indian News Papers