Comments
The Maharashtra government plans to look at building a scaled-down version of the Pune international airport at a site near Rajgurunagar that had been identified earlier and was subsequently abandoned on account of land acquisition issues.
Sanctioned by both the State government as well as the Airports Authority of India, the project that was announced over a decade ago has been plagued by problems of finding a suitable location.
In fact, the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), the agency that will execute the project, has also received ₹200 crore allocated for the first phase of land acquisition, but the funds are just lying idle, a senior official said.
“We will look at building the airport on around 1,200 hectares of land at the original site near Rajgurunagar,” Dr PS Meena, Additional Chief Secretary (Civil Aviation), Maharashtra, told BusinessLine .
Unlikely to face oppositionThe airport will have two runways, but will require half the land needed for the earlier proposal, he said, adding that since no agriculture land will have to be acquired, the project is not likely to face opposition. A decision on this will be taken soon, he said.
The earlier plan had envisaged the construction of two 4-km long, 60 m wide runways on 1,250 hectares of land, while an equal area was to be used for commercial development, building of amenities and for the purpose of returning a percentage of developed land to the farmers.
The new international airport, mooted mainly on account of restrictions imposed on civilian traffic at the city’s Lohegaon airport which belongs to the Indian Air Force base, has been hit by a kind of location jinx.
While the first site near Chakan was interfering with the operations of the IAF, farmers were opposed to the one near Rajgurunagar as it involved acquisition of agriculture land.
A third site near Khed required Baba Kalyani, Chairman, Bharat Forge, to agree to part with nearly half the land acquired under the Khed City project being developed by the Kalyani Group.
“To learn that only this land was suitable or the airport was rather unexpected,” Kalyani observed, unequivocally adding, “The Kalyani Group is not in the airport business and as of now there is no intention to enter it.”
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.