All Airports Will Get Equal Benefit Of New Aviation Policy, Says Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court said on Monday that exclusion of existing airports which are run under public-private partnership (PPP) from the benefit of liberalised use of land under the new civil aviation policy was unconstitutional.

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said that the classification drawn between the existing PPP airports and future PPP airports in the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) 2016 violates the right to equality provided in the Constitution.

Under NCAP 2016, which came into effect from June last year, existing airports such as Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport were restricted from commercially utilising their land for providing non-aeronautical services like bank ATMs, hotels, motels, general retail shops, etc.

The court directed the Centre to take necessary steps to extend the benefit of liberalised use of airport land as per NCAP 2016 to the Delhi International Airport Ltd. (DIAL) in respect of IGI Airport on par with the existing and future airports of Airport Authority of India (AAI).

The order came on a plea of DIAL, a joint venture between AAI and the GMR Group, which had challenged its exclusion under the aviation policy.

Setting aside DIAL's exclusion from liberalised use of the land allocated to it for the airport, the bench said that liberalising the end use of the airport land and unlocking the potential of the same was to advance public interest and to better manage the airport.

"Such exclusion of existing PPP airports from the benefit of liberalisation of land use therefore apparently suffers from the vice of arbitrariness," the bench said.