GVK Group dismisses Rahul Gandhi's claim, says no pressure to sell Mumbai airport to Adani

Mumbai, February 8: GVK Group vice chairman GV Sanjay Reddy on Wednesday dismissed claims made by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in Parliament that the Modi government pressured his company and "hijacked" the Mumbai airport from the conglomerate to hand it over to Adani Group. Pertinent to mention, Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL) acquired the Mumbai airport from GVK in July 2021.

Speaking to ANI, GV Sanjay Reddy said, "As far as GVK is concerned, there was absolutely no pressure on us neither through Gautam Adani nor any other agency for us to sell the airport. We sold the airport due to our own commercial interest and on our own accord."

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He said, "Mumbai airport was a holding company. We raised some loans in the holding company 10 years ago when we acquired the Bengaluru airport. And, those loans were becoming due. So we had to repay those loans. So a few years ago we started the process of getting some investors into that company. We tied up with three global investors - PSP from Canada, Ardian from Abu Dhabi and NIIF, a Governmnet of India sovereign fund. All these three investors committed to investing and we signed an agreement. We were going ahead with them. But, they have a lot of conditions precedent before they invested."

Unfortunately in 2020, Reddy said there was Covid pandemic and for about 3-4 months the airport was completely shut. It very badly affected on the financial perspective of the company and there was uncertainty about when things would come back to normal, he said.

Reddy said, "In that scenario, there was a further delay from the investors to fund the money and there was no time horizon we are getting from them. At the same time, the debt was becoming due. Under these circumstances, Gautam Adani approached me and said that he is very interested in Mumbai airport and would like to offer us the same terms that the foreign investors offered us with the condition that he would complete the transaction immediately with no conditions precedent."

Reddy emphasised that handing over Mumbai airport to Adani Airport Holdings was not a distress sale.

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Asked about Rahul Gandhi's statement that there was a rule that a company which does not have prior experience in managing an airport cannot be given the contract of running an airport and the Centre amended the rules to help Adani Group, Reddy said, "There was no rule as far as our transactions were concerned, there was not such rule."