Mumbai airport fee scrapped

The Supreme Court on Tuesday provided a minor relief to passengers travelling from Mumbai airport by striking down the decision to introduce development fee of Rs 100 and Rs 600 for domestic and international trips respectively.

A bench of Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik described the decision to levy developmental charges by the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) and Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) only on the basis of two letters issued by the Centre as ultra vires.

Passengers boarding planes at Bangalore and Hyderabad airports, will, however, continue to pay the user fee as the relevant decisions were not questioned before the apex court.

In the case of Delhi also, the passengers will continue to shell out Rs 200 for domestic and Rs 1,300 for international travel after the court noted that under the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India Act, 2008, the regulatory authority issued a public notice on April 23, last year, to levy such fees as per the requirement.

“But no such public notice has been issued by the Regulatory Authority under the 2008 Act pertaining to the levy and collection of development fees by MIAL. Hence, MIAL could not continue to levy and collect development fees at the major airport at Mumbai and cannot do so in future until the Regulatory Authority passes an appropriate order under Section 22A of the 1994 Airport Authority of India Act as amended by the 2008 Act,” the court said.

The apex court passed its order while allowing an appeal filed by an NGO, Consumer Online Foundation, against a Delhi High Court order contending that the fee was illegal as it was not approved by the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (AERA).
The DIAL and MIAL had started levying development fees on the basis of two letters issued by Centre on February 9 and 27, 2009.