The government has appointed Vipin Kumar, an Indian Administrative Service officer from the 1996 batch of Bihar cadre as the new chairman of Airports Authority of India.
Kumar takes over the responsibility from M. Suresh, currently looking after air navigation services at the authority, who was briefly given additional charge as the interim chairman, after Sanjeev Kumar, former chairman, was appointed as secretary for defence production in the Ministry of Defense in August.
Airports Authority of India is earmarked to undertake a capital expenditure of Rs. 25,000 crore for the period between 2019-20 to 2024-25.
Under the National Infrastructure Pipeline, overall capital expenditure for airports including the ones operated under the Public-Private Partnership is at Rs. 91,000 crore for the same period.
In the last financial year, Airports Authority of India operationalised 20 key airports, which included greenfield international airport in Rajkot, as well as new airports in Ayodhya, Aligarh, Shravasti, Chitrakoot, Azamgarh and Muradabad.
One of the primary responsibilities of Kumar would be to see the undertaking of the next round of leasing out of Airports Authority of Indiacontrolled airports to the private sector. The government plans to undertake the leasing of 13 airports operated by the authority, which includes airports in Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur, and Tiruchirappalli.