Northeast Congress Coordination Committee flays move to privatize airports

ITANAGAR: The Northeast Congress Coordination Committee (NECC) has taken strong exception to the Centre's decision to privatize the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Guwahati, the lone international airport of the North East.

According to the Central government decision, the Guwahati airport along with the one at Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram has been mortgaged to Adani Enterprise Ltd (AEL), the flagship entity of Adani Group, for 50 years to achieve 'self-reliance'.

Questioning the Centre as to why valuable infrastructures created by the Congress government were being privatized, NECC general secretary Padi Richo in a statement alleged that the decision has proved the incapability of the present BJP regime.

"If such privatization moves continue, who knows our country could be mortgaged in the name of self-reliance too," Richo said adding, such mortgaging step is humiliating for the nation.

"Sadly, the BJP government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not even capable of managing the profitability running public sector undertakings like the three airports which were under the Airport Authority of India (AAI)," he said.

On BJP's question on what the Congress had done during the 60 years of its rule, Richo said, "Most of the important infrastructures across the country, including airports were developed by the Congress."

"These infrastructures are now being sold out by the BJP," he alleged.

Richo, a former Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president and minister, also took a dig at the Centre for allegedly being incapable of managing the country's finance.

"Arunachal Pradesh lost Rs 2,600 crore during the 2019-20 financial year, Rs 850 crore during the first quarter of 2020-21 (April, May and June) and another Rs 950 crore loss is expected in the second quarter (July to September). This type of financial bungling had never taken place during the Congress-led UPA regime," he added.

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