Complications delay opening of Ahmedabad airport's perishables warehouse

THE Airport Authority of India (AAI) has stalled the commissioning of Gujarat's first perishable air cargo warehouse at the Sardar Vallabhai Patel International (SVPI) Airport because the state-government controlled agency charged with running the complex has allegedly breached the contract by calling in a private enterprise to manage its operations.

AAI officials said Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation Limited's (GAIC) move to employ Cargo Service Centre India Private Limited (CSC) violated the terms under which it was allotted 3,600 square metres of area at the airport for seven years, Ahmedadbad Newsline reports.

AAI officials said the GAIC never declared CSC's name earlier even though it had signed an understanding with CSC in June 2010 for the latter to manage its operations at the new cargo complex and various other places in Gujarat. GAIC currently handles the air cargo operations at SVPI.

Construction of the warehouse for perishable air cargo has been completed and it received customs clearance recently.

According to the official website of CSC, it is an 18-year-old company jointly owned by Tushar Jani and Khushroo Dubash, the founders of Blue Dart Express, who have a combined shareholding of 51 per cent. The remaining 49 per cent stake is held by Amsterdam's Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV, also known as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

"There is a specific AAI rule that the licence can be conferred in favour of a second party only if prior information is supplied. The GAIC took the land on lease and it was found only afterwards that they had given the licence to a second party for cargo handling, which is a violation of the scheme," airport sources said.

The rule also says that basic condition for which the land has been allotted on lease can't be changed. In this case, the condition was that the land could be used only for handling perishable cargo.

But GAIC managing director NK Singh said "CSC will only handle the cargo. They are not a beneficiary as claimed by the AAI. We have written letters to the AAI chairman in New Delhi on numerous occasions in the past one year, but they are delaying it".