Navi Mumbai & Pune airport updates

The proposed Navi Mumbai airport is on track and, despite the three-year delay, the first phase of the airport will be operational in 2013, said Union aviation minister Praful Patel in Pune on Monday. Mr Patel added: “I am meeting the state chief minister and other ministers next week and asking them to start the tendering process which should be completed this year. CIDCO has acquired 75% of the land needed and is waiting for the final clearance from the environment and forest ministry. It has already appointed technical, legal and financial consultants. While ecological issues need resolving, they will not come in the way of building the airport.” According to Mr Patel, the ministry had cleared the setting up of greenfield airports in areas that fall under the coastal regulation zones or CRZ, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held charge of the aviation ministry before the Lok Sabha elections. The CRZ norms came into force in 1991 to conserve the state’s sea coast and Mumbai’s mangroves. However, the minister was not so confident about the proposed airport at Chakan, near Pune. “The project at Chakan is alive but not kicking,” he said. He was reiterating Pune MP Suresh Kalmadi’s views that the Chakan airport is a decade away. Mr Patel said he felt “sad” that Maharashtra has not taken advantage of the Centre’s policy on setting up greenfield airports. Unless the state government got moving, Delhi and the northern region would by pass Maharashtra. “The Mumbai-Pune region can do with six airports, in a hub-and-spoke configuration. We need many smaller airports,” he said. He was responding to a question of viability of each airport with so many located close to one another. Should the two new projects get off the ground, there will be four airports within close proximity of each other in the Mumbai-Pune belt.