Civil Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri introduced The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Lok Sabha on March 24, 2021, to amend the definition of ‘major airport’. This bill aims to encourage the development of smaller airports. Also, the bill is structured to revise the laws governing the airports economic regulator. The centre believes the bill will extend its scope to determine the tariff for a group of airports.
The current act defines the term “major airport” as an airport that has been designated to have, annual passengers in excess of 35 lakh. But the determination of tariff for a group of airports is not provided in the act.
Public-Private partnerships to develop more airports would be a great step to expand the air connectivity to far-flung and relatively remote areas. Also, the centre has pronounced that it will be pairing airports to offer the public-private partnership model as a package to the potential bidders.
The government amended the definition of the ‘major airports’ in 2019 also where it stated that a ‘major airport’ would mean any airport with a throughput of around 3.5 million passengers annually. It is also expected that the government will hand over the operations of a major chunk of airports to private operator