With the Mayawati government again pushing for an airport in the state, the group of ministers on aviation has sought revised traffic figures from Uttar Pradesh.
It seems in its eagerness to push for a new airport at Greater Noida and an airstrip at Meerut, the UP government projected that the passenger handling capacity at the Delhi International Airport (DIAL) will be exhausted by 2015.
But this has been hotly contested by DIAL and the GoM has subsequently asked UP to conduct a new traffic survey.
According to DIAL officials, the Delhi airport is capable of handling 100 million passengers by 2034 but due to the global slowdown last year, it is already short of the passenger handling target of 27 million by 2010.
“We will be short by two million passengers even this year so where is the question of Delhi airport exhausting its peak passenger capacity by 2015….this is a commercial venture and all involved stand to lose if another airport comes up in Greater Noida”.
At present, the ministry of civil aviation has laid down a rule that any airport coming up within 150 km of an existing airport needs prior approval; the proposed airport at Greater Noida would be only about 70 km away from DIAL.
The issue of an international airport at Greater Noida has been hanging fire for years now, partly because of DIAL’s objections and partly due to political climate and ever changing equations between Mayawati and the Centre.
The DIAL official said that since the Government has a 46% revenue-sharing arrangement with DIAL promoters, any haste in clearing the Greater Noida project would not only render the DIAL project unviable but also lead to revenue loss to the government.
Official sources confirmed that a revised traffic estimate has been sought from the UP government.
They also clarified that though the state government took the help of Airports Authority of India in conducting a feasibility study for making an airstrip at Meerut, no firm proposal has yet come to the ministry of civil aviation for Meerut.
DIAL officials met officials of the ministry to discuss the Noida airport issue last fortnight.
Interestingly, there is a provision of the ‘right of first refusal’ clause in the concession agreement between the government and DIAL promoters.
This allows GMR (the main promoter of DIAL) preference in bidding for the Greater Noida airport in case its bid is within 10% of the highest bidder.
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