In line with the government?s plan to review the development in modernising key airports in the country, Cabinet secretary KM Chandrashekhar has called for a fortnightly review of the progress of modernisation of the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL).
The meeting is expected to take an account of the work that the private developer has undertaken in the airport and the areas needing improvement.
According to sources, this comes in the backdrop of last month?s fiasco over the deputy chief of the Planning commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia calling a meeting with officials from DIAL to review the progress of modernisation of the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The meeting led to the minister of civil aviation Praful Patel writing a letter to Ahluwalia asking him to concern himself with more pressing matters regarding the country?s infrastructure like roads and irrigation. The letter implied that as the country?s aviation sector was witnessing amazing growth figures and the infrastructure lack was being addressed there was no need for the deputy planning commissioner to bother about aviation matters.
The deputy chief had called the meeting allegedly after some relatives of his had faced some serious hardships while dealing with transit through the international airport. GM Rao, chairman of GMR, the major stakeholder in DIAL had then met Ahluwalia to wrest him of any concerns over the airport.
The parliamentary standing committee that looks into airports and headed by Sitaram Yechury also asked Ahluwalia, civil aviation ministry and Rao to present their case on why the development and modernisation process of the Delhi airport was causing much problems for the passengers transiting through the airport.
The secretaries of major ministries including the ministry of home affairs, ministry of urban development and poverty alleviation, ministry of finance and Ashok Chawla, secretary to the ministry of civil aviation will be meeting on June 3 to discuss issues including the progress of modernisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports among other public-private partnership projects.
