A view of Tiruchirappalli airport. Under NMP-II, 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI)-operated airports are proposed to be leased under the PPP model.
| Photo Credit:
MOORTHY M
The proposal to lease 11 airports, including Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Tiruchirappalli, has gathered significant momentum. It was recently reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), and the final parameters of the scheme may be announced during the upcoming Union Budget, sources said.
PPP Review
“The Ministry conducted internal assessments on the operational, financial and structural aspects of placing these airports under a public–private partnership (PPP) framework,” a source tracking the matter told businessline.
The proposal has now been forwarded to the Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) for detailed scrutiny, the source added.
“A formula is now being worked out under which a major airport is paired with a minor one, after which the combined entity is offered to prospective lessees through a bidding process,” the source said.
Earlier, in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on March 17, 2025, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol stated that the five large airports — Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Tiruchirappalli — have been clubbed with six smaller airports for leasing under the PPP model.
He also confirmed that this identification has been carried out as part of the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP).
Some of the smaller paired airports include Kushinagar, Gaya, Hubballi, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Jabalpur and Tirupati, the source said, although an officially complete list of all six has not been disclosed.
Under NMP-II, 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI)-operated airports are proposed to be leased under the PPP model.
In her Union Budget speech for 2025–26, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman outlined the contours of NMP-II, stating that the second phase aims to mobilise additional resources through structured asset-leasing mechanisms across key infrastructure sectors.
She further noted that regulatory and fiscal measures will be refined to support its implementation in the coming years.
Going forward, the PPPAC is expected to evaluate MoCA’s leasing proposal on financial, legal and technical parameters before any final approvals are granted.
Currently, 14 airports in India operate under PPP arrangements, with eight leased through long-term concessions.
These include Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram. Six of these — Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram — were awarded to Adani Enterprises through competitive bidding based on the highest “per passenger fee”.
The PPP model for airport management in India began in 2006 with Delhi and Mumbai airports. Since then, it has been gradually extended to other AAI airports.
In 2020–21, the Cabinet approved the leasing of Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram airports to Adani Enterprises, formalising arrangements where operators pay a per-passenger fee while managing airport operations.
These agreements are overseen by the Empowered Group of Secretaries and the PPPAC to ensure financial, legal and technical compliance.
The government has stated that the PPP model remains a key component of the National Monetisation Pipeline, which identifies 25 AAI airports for monetisation.
Published on December 25, 2025