1 Yesterday I read a news item, which said that Govt is going on to privatisation of maore airports. But this time companies looking to participate in the next privatisation round will have to bid for loss making facilities along with profit making ones. The govt has decided to bundle seven loss making with six profit making airports. This move has been initiated because, otherwise a loss making airport would not find any takers, but when it is combined with profit making airport in its vicinity there are chances of these airports being bid out too.
As per informations the profitable airports are Trichy, Bhubneshwar, Indore, Raipur, Amritsar and Varanasi, and loss making ones are Salem, Jharsuguda, Jabalpur, Jalgaon, Kangda, Khushinagar and Gaya. The possible combination might be Trichy with Salem, Varanasi with Khushinagar & Gaya (as part of religious or Buddhist tourism circuit). Raipur might go with Jabalpur, Amritsar with Kangda, Indore with Jabalpur, Bhubneshwar with Jarsuguda, and Raipur with Jalgaon. On offer will be Construction, Operation and Management for a period of 50 years. The winning bid will be decided on the basis of highest fee per pessanger.
In the earlier bid of 2019, The Adani group won all the 6 airports-Ahmedabad, Licknow, Mangalore, Jaipur , Guwahati and Thiruvanthapuram. At that there were wide spread comments that Adani group being favoured for all the profit making airports, this way no one will bid for loss making airports. In my opinion govt has waken up and now even loss making ones will also can be privatised.
Govt is also considering the privatisation of Air India, along with its subsidary Air India Express, and also Pawan Hans Limited. But the stake sales in these com[panies however are not expected to fetch substantial amounts of money.
2 Many of you might be knowing that Supreme Court Bencj (SC) is sonsidering the constitutionality 0f reservation quota being exceeded by the max limits. This issue has arisen again because of Maharashtra govt has passed the legislation for giving reservations to Maratha community, by which the limit has exceeded from 50%,
A very interesting information was revealed in the court which is needs to be given due importance while considering this increase from the max limit.
The information is
- 13 of the 19 Chief Minister of Maharashtra till date from Maratha community.
- 17 of 25 private medical colleges in the state are owned by Marathas.
- People from the Maratha community are in holding top posts in 24 of 31 district Central Co Op Banks.
- In 81 of 161 Co Op sugar factories in the state, Marathas hold the post of chairman.
The above information was given by the advocates who are fighting against the quota for Maratha community. The petitioners further argued that as per the information available Marathas in govt jobs outnumbered those from the general category in the merit list as per the recent results of the examination conducted by Maharashtra State Public Service Commission (MSPC). The Maratha community’s representation is also evenly spread across grades. Grade A-18.95%, Grade B-5.22%, Grade C 19.56% and Grade D 18.23%.. They further argued that this result show that for Group A, B &C put together, only 16% of the total seats in competition (29 out 181) have gone to general category candidates and 84% are garnered by reserved category candidates (152 out of 181). Candidates from Maratha community (Clubbed in SE Backward class) alone garnered 49.1% of open competition seats. Therefore the reservation offered by Maharashtra govt should not be passed, as this will affect more the general category candidates.
My point of view is that even after 73 years of independence there should not be any reservations, and even if they are there they shioul be only applicable to economical backward class candidates.
Waiting for your view/comments.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
18th March 2021
v
R. N. Mungale.
I agree with Mr. Malik tnat Reservation should only be economically backward not based on community.