NEW DELHI: After missing the deadline of December 31, the process of modernisation and restructuring of Delhi and Mumbai airports is likely to receive a shot in the arm with the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) scheduled to meet here on Thursday to take a final decision on the bids.

The meeting of the EGoM, headed by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, comes in the backdrop of the Sreedharan committee report which recommended that the Reliance bid for participating in the modernisation and restructuring process of the two major metro airports be rejected as it did not meet the stipulated benchmark of 80 per cent based on a set of technical criteria. Reliance had tied up with ASA Mexico to bid for the two metro airports.

Report submitted

The report by Delhi Metro man E. Sreedharan was submitted to the Government on Tuesday and if the EGoM decided to go along with it, the only one left in the race would be the GMR group. Earlier, the global advisers to the project had recommended that only GMR and Reliance were eligible to participate in the process as their technical bids were above the laid-down minimum criteria.

Left opposition

The process of modernisation and restructuring of the Delhi and Mumbai airports would remain on track. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a firm indication to this effect to Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel on Tuesday night. Dr. Singh is learnt to have told Mr. Patel to keep the process on track and adhere to the deadline of January 31 for finalising the bids. The Left parties have been asking the Government to scrap the process, suggesting that the Greenfield approach for developing the two airports be considered and the public sector Airports Authority of India (AAI) also be given a chance.

`Objectivity in report'

The Sreedharan panel was constituted by the Government to advise the Committee of Secretaries, headed by Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi, on the airport modernisation process. "There is a certain amount of objectivity in the report. It decided to evaluate only one of the six bidders that fell short of minimum criterion. Anyway, the final decision will be taken by the EGoM,'' well-placed sources said. The Government had received six bids for the restructuring of the Mumbai airport and five for the Delhi airport.

Top 3 bids

The EGoM will also have the option to examine the top three bids for both the Delhi and Mumbai airports. This will bring GVK in the race for Mumbai airport and DS Construction-Munich airport to bid for Delhi. It would mean that the 80 per cent benchmark was no longer applied.

The EGoM will need to deliberate on the legal problems that would come up if these bids were considered and the cut-off mark ignored.

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