In the wake of the public spat between civil aviation minister Praful Patel and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a parliamentary standing committee is set to meet ministry officials tomorrow to look into problems relating to airport upgradation and modernisation. Issues like the delay in modernisation of Kolkata and Chennai airports and status check on various improvement works being carried out at Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) will figure high in the deliberations. The meeting comes shortly after the flare-up between Patel and Ahluwalia on the issue of congestion at Delhi’s IGI airport, with Patel alleging that the “constant objections” being raised by the Planning Commission was delaying upgradation work.Standing committee on transport, tourism and culture chairman and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury has said that airport modernisation was being “deliberately” delayed by certain arms of the government and has sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention to check privatisation of the process through the backdoor.In his letter, Yechury has urged the Prime Minister to intervene and make sure that the airport modernisation process is not delayed any further. He also said that the Committee on Infrastructure had decided to develop the city-side of airports through the public private partnership (PPP) route but said that this was ‘reversed’ by an inter-ministerial group that sought commercial operation and maintenance of terminal buildings.Earlier, Patel had accepted that there were delays in the commencement of modernisation work at the Kolkata and Chennai airports, but had blamed the planning commission for delaying the projects by raising objections over the size and scale of expansion. While the planning commission claimed that the ministry was ‘overbuilding’, Patel claimed that the upgradation was in sync with the passenger traffic projections over the coming years.Caught in the middle, GMR-led DIAL has meanwhile made presentations to the government, outlining 14 key problems that are hampering works at the Rs 8,975 crore airport. The problems include an immediate augmentation in the number of Central Industrial Security Force personnel needed to man the airport and more personnel for immigration and customs counters.
