Nagpur: Four private players, who have qualified to bid for Nagpur airport, have sought time of at least two months to weigh the deal before they finally bid. The state government, on the other hand, has plans to invite financial bids by June this year.The issue came up during a pre-bid meeting held last week. Officials of the companies insisted that they should be given time to study entire dynamics like location, commercial prospects and other aspects before bidding. It was also insisted that successful bidder should be allowed to develop commercial infrastructure like hotels or other facilities from day one itself. The original plan calls for having such facilities on land other than the secured area of the airport after six years of the phase 1 development. The bidders want to start commercial development soon after bagging the airport deal.The meet was attended by officials of GVK, GMR, Essel Infra and PNC Infra. Tatas, which had cleared the qualification round, did not turn up for the meeting. There was no representative of the Tatas in the earlier pre-bid meeting too.Two of the companies — GVK and GMR — have a prior experience of running an airport. There was a demand from rest of the companies that the norm on having a tie-up with an experienced player by the first-timers should be relaxed. It was insisted that companies not having prior experience can come up with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an existing airport operator after they bid. Companies already running airports elsewhere insisted on having an MoU first. This can, however, eliminate competition because only two companies — GVK and GMR — have been running airports, said sources.The companies have also sought clarity on the land to be made available to them after privatization. The airport is currently run by Mihan India Limited (MIL), a joint venture of Airports Authority of India (AAI) and state government’s Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC). There is encroachment on small pockets of land to be pooled in from MADC’s site on which concern was expressed, said a source.In the previous meeting, the prospective bidders had also demanded that the original plan to build a second runway and a new terminal building may be deferred to the second phase.Ranjan Thakur, chief financial officer (CFO) of MIL, said a response will be put up before the state government for its approval. The response after securing approval from the state government is expected to be put up before the companies in coming week.Under the deal, the private investor will have to pump in Rs1,400 crore for developing infrastructure at the airport. MIL will be offloading 74% stake to the private companies.

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