Govt to lease out 3 Airports
Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Aug 19: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh, who is also In-Charge DoPT, today announced the Union Cabinet decision, based on a DoPT proposal, to set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to conduct Common Eligibility Test (CET) for jobs and called it a revolutionary, historic and visionary reform in the field of recruitment for Government jobs.
Briefing the media here, he said that the decision marks a paradigm shift in Government recruitment process. He said the multi-agency body called the NRA will conduct the CET screen/ shortlist candidates for the Group B and C (non-technical) posts and will provide a level playing field to all candidates.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that the move will not only lead to ease of recruitment, selection and Job placement, but will ultimately ensure ease of living, as about 1000 centres, atleast one in each district will be set up, where candidates can take the test. He said, the measure will immensely help the candidates from the far flung and hilly areas and particularly the girl candidates, besides saving their valuable time, money and resources.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that NRA will come into force from next year and will be headquartered in Delhi. The Minister informed that State Governments will also be advised to come on board in a true spirit of Cooperative Federalism. He also hoped that in near future private sector will also join the NRA. He said, NRA will have representatives of Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance/Department of Financial Services, the SSC, RRB & IBPS. It is envisioned that the NRA would be a specialist body bringing the state of the art technology and best practices to the field of Government recruitment.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that there will be two tests per year under NRA and the score obtained by the candidate will remain valid for three years. He said, besides Hindi and English, tests will be conducted in 12 languages in due course and efforts will be made to include all the languages mentioned in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.
The Minister said that the multiple recruitment examinations are a burden on the candidates, as also on the respective recruitment agencies, involving avoidable/repetitive expenditure, law and order/security related issues and venue related problems. He said that on an average, 2.5 crore to 3 crore candidates appear in each of these examinations, but a Common Eligibility Test would enable these candidates to appear once and apply to any or all of these recruitment agencies for the higher level of examination. This would indeed be a boon to all the candidates, he added.
Meanwhil,e the Cabinet also approved the proposal for leasing out airports at Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvanan-thapuram through Public-Private Partnership (PPP).
Adani Enterprises had won the rights to run six airports – Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthap-uram, and Guwahati – through the PPP model after a competitive bidding process in February 2019.
In July 2019, the Union Cabinet had approved the proposal for leasing out the other three airports – Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Lucknow – to Adani Enterprises.
Javadekar said the Cabinet has approved the proposal for leasing out Jaipur, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram airports through the PPP model.
Currently, the aforementioned six airports are owned and managed by the Government-run Airports Authority of India (AAI).
Eight months after the Cabinet approval, Adani Enterprises signed the concessionaire agreement with the AAI on February 14 this year for operation, management and development of airports at Ahmedabad, Mangaluru and Lucknow.
In June this year, the AAI gave three more months to the Ahmedabad-based company to take over the management of these three airports due to the COVID-19 situation. This means the deadline for takeover has been pushed from August 12 to November 12.
In a tweet, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said, “In a momentous decision under the visionary leadership of PM Shri @narendramodi Ji, the Union Cabinet has given its stamp of approval for leasing of 3 more airports at Jaipur, Guwahati & Thiruvanant-hapuram on PPP basis.”
“PPP at these airports will not only help in delivery of efficient and quality services to the air passengers but will also help @AAI_Official in enhancing its revenues & focusing on developing more airports at Tier-II & Tier III places,” he added.
Puri had on Tuesday said that the Ministry of Civil Aviation would place a proposal for “further” privatisation of airports before the Union Cabinet on Wednesday.
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