Patel said that this was in keeping with the contractual obligations with the private developers of these four airports. Patel, however, added in keeping with the greenfield airport policy, any other greenfield airport that might come up in any other part of the country only needed the approval of the Steering Committee headed by the Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Second airports at both Mumbai and Delhi were already approved by the cabinet before the greenfield airport policy was passed. The Greater Noida proposal has been passed to an empowered group of ministers for final approval and is out of the ambit of the greenfield airport policy.
Future airport proposals in Hyderabad and Bangalore would also be out of the policy's reach. A clause in the concession agreement for both Hyderabad and Bangalore says that no second airport will be allowed within 150 km of the new greenfield airports coming up in this cities for the next twenty-five years. In future, if the private developer objects to the coming up of a second airport in either Bangalore or Hyderabad, the policy will not be able to intervene.
Raising the issue of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) as a grave issue concerning the civil aviation industry, Patel said that he had tried to convince all the state governments to rationalise sales tax on aviation turbine. Patel had also taken up the issue of high ATF prices at the level of Central Government without much success. He had discussed related issues with the ministry of finance and ministry of petroleum who also showed constraints.
Already four states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan and Maharashtra have reduced sales tax on ATF to 4 per cent. Maharashtra has, however, kept Mumbai and Pune out of this exemption. Earlier this week, Patel had requested finance ministers of other states levying sales tax of above 20 per cent to consider decreasing it to 12.5 per cent.