Mumbai airport, four more to be leased out
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, JAN 12: The Union Cabinet today decided to re-route its plans of corporatising the five major airports by offering them on a long-term lease basis. The five airports are Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore.

In keeping with its assurance made to Parliament during the winter session, the Cabinet, in another significant decision, appointed a fresh commission of inquiry to look into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

The inquiry commission, to be headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, will be asked to submit its report within six months, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan told reporters after the Cabinet meeting held this morning. Supreme Court Chief Justice A S Anand has been asked to name its chairperson.

On the airport corporatisation bid, he said that the Government had also decided to amend the Airports Authority of India (AAI) Act, 1994, to enable the AAI to keep its revenue with an object to provide cross-subsidy to minor airports.

The amendment of the Act by the Cabinet will also enable the leasing-out of the five airports. ``The Bill amending the AAI Act will be introduced in the next session of Parliament,'' the minister said. The previous government had decided to corporatise the five airports. The decision was announced by then Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar. However, the Task Force on Infrastructure pointed out various hurdles associated with corporatisation, and suggested the long-term lease of these airports instead.

The AAI has already floated a global tender to appoint consultants for the long-term lease of the airports. The shortlisting of the consultants is currently being done.

On the latest inquiry commission set up to probe afresh the 1984 riots, he said that it would look into the causes and the course of the criminal violence and the riots targetting members of the Sikh community following then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31, 1984, the sequence of events leading to the violence, the lapses or dereliction of duty on the part of any individual authorities and the adequacy of administrative measures taken to prevent and deal with the violence and to recommend measures that may be required to meet the ends of justice.

The Cabinet decision comes in the wake of Union Home Minister L K Advani's assurance to both Houses of Parliament that the government would take steps to have a fresh look into riots. After remaining quiet for a while, former Union Finance Minister Manmohan Singh came out in support of the move.

The then Congress government, headed by Rajiv Gandhi, had in April 1985 appointed the Justice Ranganath Mishra inquiry commission which went into the riots. There were two other sub-commissions which probed the riots.The latest probe, according to Mahajan, was being appointed because prosecution of the accused in the riots and their conviction was negligible and various sections had demanded a fresh probe.

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