After TN, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand seek revenue share of privatised airports

New Delhi: Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have come out in support of Tamil Nadu's stance that whenever the Central government privatises an airport in a state, the state government should get a share in the revenue.

In a policy note issued earlier this month, Tamil Nadu said that if the state government acquires and transfers land to the Centre-run Airports Authority of India (AAI) free of cost, and if the AAI or the Centre transfers that land to a third party, the value realised or revenue accrued thereby must be proportionately shared with the state government "reflecting the huge investment in land being made by the state government."

The AAI's board had in September last year given approval to privatise 13 airports, including Trichy in Tamil Nadu and Raipur in Chhattisgarh.

T S Singhdeo, Chhattisgarh's Minister of Panchayat and Rural Development, Health and Family Welfare and Commercial Tax, said land is a state resource and when the state and the central government come together for developing a project, which is supposed to be an earning project, the state government's capital is presented as a shareholder in terms of the land.

"So long as it is in government sector, things are moving in a particular way, the government of India would be making some revenue and there would be something spilling over to the state government and there would be benefit to the public, so that is fine," he said.

"When you are selling it to a third entity which is a private party, then you are selling assets of the company, which include land also. So, the state government should be given the value of the land," he said.

According to National Monetisation Pipeline issued in 2021, 25 AAI-run airports have been marked for asset monetisation that include Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.