Maharashtra Industries Minister Narayan Rane said the State Government would ask the Prime Minister to disband the Western Ghats Ecology Experts’ Panel, headed by National Advisory Council member Madhav Gadgil, which monitors the environment along the Konkan coast.
Reiterating his opposition to the panel’s report, he said that it was a death knell to Konkan’s development.
“Madhav Gadgil, who authored the report, should have had a dialogue with me instead of making wild allegations against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan,” he told a gathering at the ‘Advantage Konkan’ meet here.
Work on the Sindhudurg airport will begin next month and be completed well before for the 2014 general elections, he said.
He said that survey work for a mini-train aimed at Sindhudurg tourists has been completed.
A decision has to be taken on whether the Konkan Railway would construct it or if it would be done on a build-operate-transfer basis.
Other projects for Konkan include a Rs 700-crore ‘sea world’ in Malvan; a garment industry in Guhaghar; a port at Vijaydurg at a cost of Rs 4,100 crore; the Poladpur road at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore and an infotech park at Oras, he said.