How the Delhi Airport Terminal 1 fiasco exposes the sorry state of infrastructure regulation in India
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) has denied any culpability in the collapse of the canopy of its Terminal 1 (T1) last year, which killed one person and injured eight others. This doesn't come as a surprise.
DIAL, which operates the Indira Gandhi International Airport’s three terminals, also dismissed the findings of a three-member expert committee, comprising engineering professors from IIT Delhi and IIT Jammu, as “flawed and inaccurate" and based on “inadequate information," according to media reports. It later admitted that certain documents were not made available to the committee while it was probing the issue. The committee, appointed by the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, found serious design flaws, major deviations from design in construction, overall inferior execution, and inadequate maintenance for the canopy's collapse during heavy rainfall in June last year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the spanking new terminal barely three months before the accident. That the incident took place at Delhi Airport, often touted as a showpiece of India’s modern infrastructure development capabilities, is worrying enough. IGI Airport is India’s busiest, with 77.8 million passengers handled last year.
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