People's Democracy

‘Recover Money Illegally Collected by DIAL’

ACCORDING to the written reply to an unstarred question on August 4, 2011, asked by CPI(M) MP, K N Balagopal, the Ministry of Civil Aviation informed the house that the Delhi International Airport Pvt Ltd (DIAL) had stopped the collection of development fee (DF), as per the  High Court’s judgement, with effect from June 1, 2011. While hearing two writ petitions, the court gave such a direction because it found the development fee collection as illegal according to the conditions of contract.

The ministry’s reply further gave the details of the money collected before the implementation of the judgement. It said, “Levy of DF was started from 01-03-2009 and collected till 01-06-2011. As per the monthly audit report, the total collection of DF up to the month of June 2011 is Rs 1481.72 crore.” From this statement made before the parliament, it is clear that the DIAL has collected Rs 1481.72 crore illegally and that the DIAL is not eligible to keep the same amount with itself. This huge amount of money, which has been collected from the passengers, should not be parked with the company which has violated all the legal and administrative principles. Therefore it is the responsibility of the government to take this money over from the DIAL, as it may be used for the development of aviation services or for the benefit of infrastructure development. In view of this situation, Balagopal has urged the government to take immediate steps to recover this amount from the DIAL for the exchequer.

The MP has also urged the government to look into the functioning of all PPP airports in the country, including the alleged cost overruns, escalated estimates, unilateral pricing decisions, illegal development or user fee collections etc. Since these projects are PPP projects and involves huge state assets and monopoly service privileges of the government, government auditors should be involved in the auditing procedure. The recent findings by CAG in relation to the KG basin project are an example of the state’s role is necessary in evaluating the accounts of projects involving valuable national assets. As airports too are national assets, but are being given to private parties in the name of public private partnership (PPP), the state must ensure reasonable and careful use of national assets for the benefit of the citizens.

Through a letter written to the prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on August 10, the CPI(M) MP asked him too to look into the matter and take urgent and serious steps to recover the money illegally collected by the DIAL and ensure the intervention of the government to curb the maladministration in PPP airport projects.