Left somersaults on Kolkata airport privatisation

Kolkata: In an ideological somersault, the ruling Left Front in West Bengal on Tuesday said it was not averse to modernisation of the Kolkata airport in keeping with the central government's policy of private groups undertaking the job.
Despite its strong protests against the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's move to modernise the Mumbai and Delhi airports by private companies instead of the Airport Authority of India (AAI), West Bengal Industry Minister Nirupam Sen said their government would not oppose the same criterion if was applied to Kolkata.
"We have told the centre that our airport (NSCBI airport) has to be modernised too. Ideally AAI should do this work since they have the competence and we all want that, but if the centre takes a stance that modernisation would be done only by private groups then we have to rethink our stand since upgrading the Kolkata airport is vital for us," a pragmatic Sen told a news channel here.
23/05/06 Times of India

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