'Sour grapes': Kerala HC chides state govt for losing bid for Thiruvananthapuram Airport

Kerala High Court has dismissed the state government's petition to stall the hand over the Thiruvananthapuram Airport to Adani Enterprises, citing that there is no valid ground to cause interference to the proceedings.

Earlier, The state government as well as Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation ( KSIDC) had filed writ petitions against the Centre's decision to lease out the airport to Adani Group.
The state government counsel represented by Vikas Singh, P Narayanan and V Manu had requested to remove the Request for Proposal  (RFP)--  a term used for contracting of external agency for the outsourcing of manpower-- and instead, declare that the state has a preferential claim in 'public interest'.

While, the KSIDC petition filed by their counsel K Jaju Babu, MU Vijayalakshmi and Brijesh Mohan had stated that the tender procedure was arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional.  Responding to it, the High Court called the petition as a classic case of 'proverbial sour grapes'.

KSIDC had lost out to Adani Enterprises' winning bid for the airport's lease and maintenance by a fairly large margin of Rs19.7  per passenger.

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Kerala HC quashes other writ petitions

The judgment made by Justice K  Vinod Chandran and Justice C S Dias also pointed that he state nominated KSIDC to bid under the Request For Proposal (RFP) issued by the Airport Authority of India, with the right of first refusal on the maximum bid coming within 10 percent, was duly implemented.

The court came down heavily on similar writ petitions co-filed by those who claimed to be frequent fliers and users of Thiruvananthapuram international airport of 2019, saying that it had no locus-standi. Giving a stern warning that the petition was on 'mischievous' and 'abuse of process of the cost', It also did contemplate to impose heavy costs for it but avoided it as it didn't take any additional time of the court.

The court also quashed other writ petitions filed on behalf of employee union of Thiruvananthapuram International Airport as well.  Calling the writ petition filed by various individuals as 'trite', 'feeble' and 'devoid of merit', the court upheld Adani Group's right to manage the Thiruvananthapuram airport and implement the Private-Public policy of managing airports under Airport Authority of India. 

The senior Counsel S Sreekumar and Advocate Roshen D Alexander along with Advocates Tina Alex and Harimohan appeared for Adani Enterprises. They had argued that the property acquired and transferred to Airport Authority of India completely vests with the Authority and therefore neither the State Government nor KSIDC has any locus to lay any claim based on the transfer of such property. Answering to the wrong contentions taken by some of the petitioners that participation of qualified bidders in the tender process was less, Adani Enterprises pointed out that 25 bidders have registered and 10 bidders submitted 32 bids for various airports.

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