Reliance cries foul on airport revamp, again

Reliance Airports Developers, part of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprises, today stated before the Delhi High Court that the evaluation committee (EC) had adjudged the Reliance-ASA consortium's initial development plan (IDP) as the best, with about 90 per cent marks.

Senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for Reliance, said the EC had found GMR-Fraport's IDP "unsuitable for implementation in the current form". The plaintiff's arguments are likely to continue for two more days, after which it will be the respondents' turn.

Apart from the EC, the government review committee (GRC) and inter-ministerial group (IMG) also found faults in the GMR-Fraport project as ''the plan poses a high risk that mandatory developments can't take place before March 2010,'' said Rohtagi.

The Reliance-ASA's contention is that despite producing the best plans, it lost due to low marks in the assessment of the management of airports.

Rohtagi contended that Reliance's partner, ASA, had the experience of developing more than 50 airports in Mexico and South America. GMR's partner Fraport and GVK's partner ACS, he said, had limited experience.

The ACS, said Rohtagi, was only involved in developing two airports in South Africa and Fraport had only executed the Frankfurt airport. He added that "no reasonable person would have accepted the IDP of the GMR-Fraport".

The Reliance counsel questioned how the government had accepted the report of the Sreedharan Committee, which, he said, had just evaluated the management criteria and not the IDP.

Additional Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam said the government would supply copies of the reports of the EC, the inter-ministerial group and the GRC, but refused to provide the minutes of the meetings of the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) to the Reliance consortium and other bidders as they were classified documents.