dna impact: Deadline for Navi Mumbai airport is 2017, says Ajit Singh

The Navi Mumbai airport project is still on, civil aviation minister Ajit Singh said on Monday.

Irrespective of the delays, the ministry will go ahead with the project and “there is no question of the project being scrapped,” Singh told this paper.

dna did a series of stories on the Navi Mumbai airport exposing how the project has been mired in controversy and the government has made little headway while developers have made a killing for the past 10 years.

Following dna’s reports, the governments at the Centre and the state seem to have woken up. While chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, with a posse of Cidco officials, was in Delhi on Monday to meet prime minister Manmohan Singh regarding the airport, the civil aviation ministry made it clear that the project will get completed by 2017.

Monday’s meeting between the PM and the CM was called as part of the PM’s efforts to fast-track the airport and the elevated rail corridor (CST to Panvel and Churchgate to Virar) projects well before the code of conduct for the upcoming elections comes into force.

But the meeting between the two could not take place on Monday as the PM was busy with the National Integration Council meeting.

Another meeting has been scheduled for next week.

Cidco (City and Industrial Development Corporation) officials, who accompanied Chavan, however, called on civil aviation secretary KN Srivastav and updated him about the airport project. Joint managing director of Cidco V Radha said the project is very much alive though there are some technical glitches and certain issues pertaining to project affected people (PAP) in Navi Mumbai.

“The PAP are asking us to clear the dues pending for land acquired earlier for the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT). The government was supposed to compensate farmers with 160 hectares of developed land against the land acquired from them for JNPT. Their contention is: so far only 111 hectares of developed land has been given to them,” she said.

“The villagers want us to first clear the earlier dues before going for fresh acquisitions for the proposed airport. We are offering developed land against the farmers’ land.”

Cidco, which is the nodal agency for Navi Mumbai airport, has acquired 1,641 acres of land against a total requirement of about 2,056 acres. “We have to acquire now only 415 acres of land from the farmers. Negotiations are on,” a Cidco spokesperson said.

“Survey has started in three villages and it will soon commence in the remaining seven villages. The villagers wanted us to hold the survey after the Ganesh festival. The project is on right track,” Radha said.

Ajit Singh said the ministry is also working on expediting the expansion of the Juhu airport and has written to the Maharashtra urban development department for acquiring land. “We are not looking at the expansion of Juhu airport as an alternative to the Navi Mumbai airport. Both projects are independent of each other and will take place in due course of time,” Singh said.

He said the ministry was in touch with the state government and both projects will soon start.

Project alive, says cidco
Irrespective of the delays, the ministry will go ahead with the project and “there is no question of the project being scrapped”, civil aviation minister Ajit Singh said

The airport project is very much alive though there are some technical glitches, joint managing director of Cidco
V Radha said

Cidco, which is the nodal agency for Navi Mumbai airport, has acquired 1,641 acres of land against a total requirement of about 2,056 acres

Survey has started in three villages and it will soon commence in the remaining seven villages. “The project is on right track,” Radha said.