After Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, the Tamil Nadu Government has said whenever the Central Government privatises an airport in a State, the State Government should get a share in the revenue.  While the Ministry of Civil Aviation is yet to officially comment on this matter, its officials said the decision regarding the matter will be taken at the higher levels of the government.  Both Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have supported the Tamil Nadu government’s stance on this matter.

In a policy note issued earlier this month, Tamil Nadu said that  if the state government acquires and transfers land to the Centre-run  Airports Authority of India (AAI) free of cost, and if the AAI or  the Centre transfers that land to a third party, the value realised  or revenue accrued thereby must be proportionately shared with the  state government "reflecting the huge investment in land being made  by the state government".

The AAI's board had in September last year gave the approval to privatise 13 airports, including Trichy in Tamil Nadu and Raipur in Chhattisgarh. According to the National Monetisation Pipeline issued last year, 25 AAI-run airports have been earmarked for asset monetisation that include Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Trichy, Indore, Raipur, Calicut, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Patna, Madurai, Surat, Ranchi Jodhpur, Chennai, Vijayawada, Vadodara, Bhopal, Tirupati, Hubli, Imphal, Agartala, Udaipur, Dehradun and Rajahmundry.

The Centre had in 2019 privatised airports at Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, and Guwahati for operation, management and development through public-private partnership (PPP) model. 

The Adani group won the bids to run all six airports T S Singhdeo, Chhattisgarh's Minister of Panchayat and Rural Development, Health and Family Welfare and Commercial Tax, said land is a state resource and when the State and the Central Government come together for developing a project, which is supposed to be an earning project, the State Government's capital is present as a shareholder in terms of the land. 

"Now when you are selling it to a third entity which is a private party, then you are selling the assets of the company, which include apart from the infrastructure, the land also. So, the state government should be given the value of the land," Singhdeo said.

Asked about Tamil Nadu's demand, Jharkhand Finance Minister Rameshwar Oraon told PTI, "I agree (with the Tamil Nadu Government). Land belongs to the state."  "When it is under the central government, we have no issues, we give land, water and other resources. But if the Centre is handing it to private parties, revenue should be shared with the state government. A policy should be framed in this regard for all the states, not just Jharkhand," Oraon added.