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Suresh Kalmadi boards the Chakan airport plan train

Kalmadi made yet another promise that work on the Chakan airport would begin soon and a ‘sizeable’ chunk of money is to be allocated in this year’s budget for the new airport.

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On Friday, Member of Parliament (MP) Suresh Kalmadi made yet another promise that work on the Chakan airport would begin soon and a ‘sizeable’ chunk of money is to be allocated in this year’s budget for the new airport.

Kalmadi was attending a meeting of the airport advisory committee (AAC) where members pointed out that they were facing a host of problems at the old airport primarily because it was controlled by defence authorities and many restrictions had been placed on civil aviation operations.

Members of AAC pointed out how Pune has emerged as the 11th busiest airport in the country but continue to face problems like shortage of space for parking aircrafts, short runways and limited flight operation timings.

Kalmadi said that he has been assured by chief minister and deputy chief minister of a sizeable chunk of money for the airport in the forthcoming budget.

When pointed out that farmers in Chakan at the proposed site had objected to land acquisitions and if a compensation package had now been agreed upon, he reacted, “I have been given to understand that the farmers have agreed.”

Ironically, while Kalmadi once again repeated the promise for Chakan airport, officials said it is nothing but a case of old wine in a new bottle. The promise for a new airport has been repeated umpteenth times in the past with ex-divisional commissioner Dilip Band even announcing in November 2011 that Rs200 crore had been allotted as seed money for Chakan airport and a fresh site had been identified.

While Kalmadi said that a heavy budgetary allocation had been done for Chakan airport, divisional commissioner Prabhakar Deshmukh stated that no final decision has been taken on the project yet.

“We will be calling for a meeting next week to take a call about the location of the airport. So far, no location has been finalised and we can talk about it only after the meeting,” he said.

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