6 months ago
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The Centre has asked Airports Authority of India (AAI) to survey a petition from Maldives seeking assistance of Indian companies to negociate its precocious upgraded Hanimaadhoo International Airport. The petition comes much than a decennary aft the Maldives authorities abruptly terminated a declaration with Indian infrastructure conglomerate GMR to make the Male International Airport and evicted the company’s unit from the island.
Earlier this week, the Ministry of Civil Aviation wrote to AAI saying that the petition for assistance was made during the inauguration of the airdrome connected November 9, 2025, by President Mohamed Muizzu to Civil Aviation Minister K. Ram Mohan Naidu, who was contiguous arsenic a peculiar envoy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
AAI has been instructed to survey the connection for “engaging Indian companies for the absorption of the airport”, a elder authoritative from the Ministry told The Hindu.
AAI manages 26 State authorities airports, successful summation to owning 113 airports successful the country. Thirteen AAI-owned airports are managed by backstage operators specified arsenic GMR, GVK and Adani Group, which has 7 AAI airports nether its kitty, isolated from Navi Mumbai.
India supported the redevelopment and enlargement works astatine Hanimaadhoo airdrome that has been operational since 1986 with a $800 cardinal enactment of recognition issued by EXIM Bank of India. Redevelopment works were contracted to an Indian company, JMC Projects, astatine a outgo of $136.6 million. The upgradation includes a 2,465-metre runway susceptible of landing an Airbus A320 craft and a caller rider gathering to grip 1.3 cardinal flyers annually. The airdrome is dubbed arsenic a catalyst for economical maturation successful the bluish portion of Maldives arsenic good arsenic enhanced planetary connectivity.
Maldives’s petition has travel implicit a decennary aft a debacle that saw GMR’s ouster from the island. In November 2012, the Maldives Cabinet cancelled a woody signed with GMR successful 2010 for upgrading and operating the country’s biggest airport. The $511 cardinal woody was Maldives’s biggest overseas concern task astatine the clip and was declared void-ab-initio (having nary ineligible effect from inception) with GMR fixed a seven-day ultimatum to permission the country.
In 2014, the Chinese institution Beijing Urban Construction Group was awarded the declaration for operation works and the Maldives authorities said the airdrome would not beryllium privatised again aft its operations were handed implicit to the government-owned Maldives Airports Company Limited.
Later, connected October 25, 2016, GMR was awarded a compensation worthy $270 cardinal for wrongful termination of the woody by a tribunal astatine the Singapore Arbitration Centre.
