"Centre Clears 11 Airports for Public-Private Partnership Leasing; Details Likely in Budget 2026"

The Centre’s plan to lease 11 airports, including Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur, and Tiruchirapalli, has advanced after receiving approval from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, according to Businessline. Sources indicate that the final parameters of the scheme may be announced in the upcoming Union Budget 2026.

The proposal has now been sent to the Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) for detailed scrutiny covering financial, legal, and technical aspects.

Proposed Structure and Implementation

Under the proposed framework, each larger airport will be paired with a smaller one, and the combined entity will be offered to prospective lessees through competitive bidding. The leasing exercise is part of the second phase of the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP-II), under which 25 airports operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are planned to be leased via the PPP model.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on March 17, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said that five large airports—Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur, and Tiruchirapalli—have been clubbed with six smaller airports for leasing. Sources identified some of the smaller airports as Kushinagar, Gaya, Hubballi, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Jabalpur, and Tirupati, though the official list has not been released.

In her Union Budget 2025–26 speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted the NMP-II framework, emphasizing that the second phase aims to mobilise additional resources through structured asset-leasing across infrastructure sectors. Regulatory and fiscal measures are expected to be refined to support implementation in the coming years.

Track Record of PPP in Airports

Currently, 14 airports in India operate under the PPP model, with eight leased through long-term concessions, including Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru, and Thiruvananthapuram. Six of these—Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati, and Thiruvananthapuram—were awarded to Adani Enterprises via competitive bidding based on the highest per-passenger fee offered.

India’s airport PPP model began in 2006 with the leasing of Delhi and Mumbai airports and has since been extended to other AAI-operated airports. In 2020–21, the Cabinet approved the leasing of Jaipur, Guwahati, and Thiruvananthapuram airports, allowing private operators to manage airport operations in return for per-passenger payments.

The PPP Appraisal Committee is expected to complete its evaluation before final approvals are granted, paving the way for the next phase of airport leasing under the government’s monetisation programme.