Pune airport update

Two days after chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said that local leadership needs to sort out issues relating to Pune’s international airport, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said the airport project will be pushed ahead with the help of private players, if the issues of land allotment and acquisition are not resolved through the government machinery. Pawar also assured the much-needed impetus to the pending projects in the city, including the metro, monorail, PMRDA and the BRTS projects. A series of meeting will be held to discuss the projects soon after the Nagpur session of the assembly, he said. “I have a stand that we should find a way out to resolve the airport issue,” Pawar said. Talks are on at various levels and also with the civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, over allocation of land and inclusion of private players in the project, he added. Pawar was speaking at the ‘meet the press’ event organised by the Pune union of working journalists. Pawar said projects like airport require huge stretches of land. Issues like rehabilitation of the affected people, too, have to be addressed. If the government acquires the land, the airport will come up on the left side of the Pune-Nashik highway. In case private parties are involved, it will come up on the right side.
Speaking on issues relating to the city, the deputy CM said, I know many city issues have been pending for long. “I assure that every issue will be resolved within a certain time frame,” Pawar added.