Cabinet approval on transfer of Nagpur airport to MADC soon: Patel

Mumbai, Aug 25 (UNI) Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel expressed hope that the Union Cabinet will soon give its approval regarding the transfer of the Nagpur airport to the Maharashtra Airport Development Authority (MADC) for the Multi-Modal International Air Passenger and Cargo Hub at Nagpur (MIHAN).

''A cabinet note in this regard has already been circulated, and I hope the Union Government will soon give its approval,'' Patel told UNI after attending a high-level meeting, which was held here today to review the progress on the Navi Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune airport projects.

Mr Patel further said that there is a need to hasten up the progress as the existing Mumbai airport would not be able to cope up with the ever-increasing air traffic beyond 2011-12.

Besides Mr Patel, the meeting was also attended by Chief Minister Vialsrao Deshmukh, top officials from MADC, Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) as well as senior officials from the Civil Aviation Ministry.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Maharashtra government today 'in principle' agreed to provide 12.5 per cent land to the affected persons, whose land will be acquired for the development of the Nagpur Airport.

''While the cash compensation issue could not be resolved, the Maharashtra government has 'in principle' agreed to provide 12.5 per cent land to the project-affected persons to pave the way for further acquisition of the land for the modernisation project of the Nagpur airport,'' Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy and Member of Parliament from Nagpur, Vilas Muttemwar said.

While the Government is offering Rs 1.5 lakh per hectare to the projected-affected people in lieu of the land which the Government will acquire for the development of the project, the farmers are demanding Rs 30 lakh per hectare on the grounds that the land prices in the region have sky-rocketed in the recent past, and what the Government is offering to them is peanuts.

The Government has so far acquired only 2,000 hectares of the land, while another 2,000-odd hectares remain to be acquired to go ahead with the project.

''The airport at Nagpur is to be handed over to a joint venture company (JVC) between MADC and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for development under the MIHAN project,'' Mr Muttemwar added.

The handing over of the airport is necessary because its contiguousness to the multi-product special economic zone (SEZ), which is part of MIHAN, is the project's unique selling point.

Aviation major Boeing, which plans to set up a maintenance, repairs and overhaul (MRO) hub in the SEZ, will not execute its plans if the airport is not handed over. The airport has to be handed over for the construction of a second runway, parallel to the existing one, which is necessary for the MRO hub.

UNI