Iconic Air India building will house state govt offices
Centre approves transfer of iconic Nariman Point building to state govt for ₹1,601 crore
MUMBAI: The central government has approved the transfer of the iconic Air India building at Nariman Point to the Maharashtra government for a sum of Rs 1,601 crore, besides the waiver of old dues payable to the state amounting to about Rs 298.42 crore. The building is currently the property of the Air India Assets Holding Company Limited (AIAHL), a special purpose vehicle created in January 2018 by the central government to manage Air India’s assets.
The news of the sale was made public by Tuhin Kanta Pandey, union secretary in charge of the department of investment and public assets management, in a post on X.
The central government’s initial idea was to sell off Air India’s assets to raise funds, but later it realised that the sale of the landmark building could attract criticism. Hence, it decided to sell the building to government firms. In 2019, three entities—the Maharashtra government, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Life Insurance Corporation of India—evinced interest, bidding ₹1,375 crore, ₹1,200 crore and ₹1,400 crore respectively. After the Eknath Shinde-led government assumed office in June 2022, it revised the bid to ₹1,601 crore against Air India’s ask of ₹2,000 crore.
In a meeting at Mantralaya on May 1, 2019, UPS Madan, the then state chief secretary, had placed the government’s terms and conditions before the then civil aviation secretary Pradeep Kharola and Air India’s then managing director Ashwani Lohani. At the time, Air India wanted to retain the topmost floor along with the logo. That will be relegated to history, given the state’s firm condition of full ownership.
A senior officer who has dealt with the case for a long time said that the building would come in handy to house government offices since the Mantralaya building had insufficient space. Ever since the massive inferno that engulfed Mantralaya in 2012, four departments—public health, medical education, water supply and sanitation and rural development—have been operating from the GT Hospital premises and Bandhkam Bhavan.
The Air India building was constructed in 1974 on land owned by the state government. Nine floors of the building are vacant at present in addition to the 13th floor, which has been unoccupied for several decades owing to the superstition about 13 being an unlucky number. Three floors house the GST offices and eight floors are with the income-tax department. The ground and first floors are with Air India. The state has asked AIAHL to hand over the building free of encumbrances.
The 23-storied building with a stunning view of the Arabian Sea was built by post-modern architect John Burgee of the New York architectural firm Johnson/burgee. It was in one of these garage basements that a car bomb exploded on March 12, 1993, when a series of bomb blasts shook the city. Twenty people were killed in the attack and the offices of the Bank of Oman located above the garage were destroyed.
The Air India building had a huge collection of art works, purchased during the tenure of JRD Tata. These were on display in the building and also at Air India offices worldwide. When Air India closed down, most of them were stored on the first floor. Last year, the government gave them away to the National Gallery of Modern Art. After 5 years of struggle to privatise the debt-ridden airline, the government accepted Tata Sons’ bid for its flagship carrier for Rs 18,000 crore in October 2021.