Chavan opened his innings with a masterstroke as the environment ministry cleared the Rs9,970-crore Navi Mumbai airport.
Spending years at the prime minister’s office has started yielding results for chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.
Chavan opened his innings with a masterstroke as the environment ministry cleared the Rs9,970-crore Navi Mumbai airport.
Though the outcome is a collective effort by the prime minister’s office, the civil aviation ministry, the environment ministry, and the state government, it has come as a major boost for the Congress-NCP combine in the state.
“We cannot undermine the effort of the chief minister,” a senior NCP minister said. “It is an achievement that goes a long way in state welfare.”
Another leader said that the advantage with Chavan is “he can use his excellent rapport with the PMO to get developmental projects cleared”.
Chavan left for Delhi within 48 hours of announcing the names of his council of ministers. A source said that prime minister Manmohan Singh did some hard talking with Jairam Ramesh.
“Local people never objected to the airport in Navi Mumbai,” a senior secretary in the ministry of environment said.
“It was mostly environmentalists because they were doubtful of the results of diverting the river. Also, they were worried that the green belt would be destroyed.”
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel, who seemed determined from the beginning to have the project in Navi Mumbai, tried to mobilise politicians from across the political spectrum to lend their support to the project.
Cutting across party lines, MLAs and MPs had met the prime minister a couple of months ago to explain why the airport in Navi Mumbai was necessary and how it would help tackle the growing congestion at the present airport in Mumbai.
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