The government is accelerating efforts to lease 11 additional airports under the public–private partnership (PPP) framework, with the proposal gaining momentum after being reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Civil Aviation(MoCA). Sources said the final contours of the scheme could be announced during the upcoming Union Budget.

The proposal has now been forwarded to the Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) for detailed evaluation. As part of the plan, five major airports—Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Tiruchirappalli—have been clubbed with six smaller airports to create combined assets that will be offered to bidders. The pairing is intended to make smaller airports financially viable while attracting private investment.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha in March 2025, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol confirmed that the airport identification was carried out under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP). Smaller airports reportedly paired in the proposal include Kushinagar, Gaya, Hubballi, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Jabalpur and Tirupati, though an official list is yet to be released.

Under NMP-II, a total of 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI)-operated airports are proposed for leasing. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the second phase of the NMP aims to mobilise resources through structured asset monetisation.

Currently, 14 airports operate under PPP arrangements, including Delhi and Mumbai. Six airports—Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram—were awarded to Adani Enterprises through competitive bidding, underscoring the government’s continued reliance on the PPP model to modernise airport infrastructure.