Civil Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri, on Tuesday, said that the ministry will submit a new proposal before the Cabinet “highlighting further privatisation of airports”. He was talking at a webinar  ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat: Fostering Steel Usage in Housing & Construction and Aviation Sector’, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

“We are going to the Cabinet tomorrow for further airport privatisation. We have got many more airports lined up, dozens of them, and 100 new airports we will build between now and 2030,” Puri said.

In February last year, the Narendra Modi government had approved public-private partnership (PPP) model for six airports, including Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati. Subsequently, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had recommended to lease out more airports in September 2019.

As of now, Adani Enterprises has the rights to run these six airports.

The aviation sector has been hit hard due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After a gap of two months due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, India resumed domestic passenger flights on May 25, albeit in a curtailed manner. International passenger flights continue to remain suspended in the country.