To develop civil aviation sector and increase air connectivity to Tier-II and Tier-III cities in India, the Union government on June 28 decided to set up 51 new low-cost airports. The State-owned airport operator, Airports Authority of India (AAI), would set up the low-cost airports in 51 cities in 10 states, Apart from the low-cost airports, the government has decided grant new international airport status to Bhubaneswar and Imphal at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore. The 51 low-cost airports will come up in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Also, construction of eight greenfield airports this year would be awarded under public-private-participation (PPP) mode for Navi Mumbai, Juhu in Mumbai, Goa, Kannur, Rajguru Nagar, Chakan at Pune, Sriperumbudur, Bellary and Raigarh, a statement from Prime Minister’s Office said.
The government was also mulling operation and maintenance of airports at Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur and Ahmedabad thr¡ough PPP contracts. In a bid to ramp up investor sentiment, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set an investment target of Rs 1.15 lakh crore in public private partnership (PPP) projects across infrastructure sectors in the next six months.
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