The Gautam Adani Infra group has won the financial bid opened by the Airports Authority of India to operate the Guwahati International Airport. This comes a day after it won the rights to operate five other airports under the government's privatization drive.

On quoting Rs 160 as the per passenger fare (PPF) for the Guwahati airport, the group struck as the highest bidder among five other bidders that included state-backed National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF).

In a statement on Monday, the civil aviation ministry said that Adani Group had emerged as the single largest bidder for five other international airports that are Mangalore, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad and Lucknow with rights to operate and manage.

The Centre had opened technical bids last week and received 32 bids from various private infra players in India. Among the six cities, Jaipur and Ahmedabad received the maximum bids of seven each. This was followed by Lucknow and Guwahati airports with six bids each, while Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram airports received three bids each.

It is a part of the government's effort to privatizing these airports on a public-private-partnership (PPP) model to develop world-class infrastructure. This comes as the second biggest round of privatizing airports more than a decade after Delhi and Mumbai airports were handed out to GMR and GVK groups for operation.

A new model of revenue will be opted by the AAI to generate revenue from these six airports that require the payment of the PPF on a monthly basis in respect to the number of passengers (both domestic and international) handled at the airports as per the agreement. The entire process of privatization will be handled by the Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) which includes NITI Aayog's CEO and Secretaries from finance and aviation ministries.