Flight plan, ground reality

It was touted as Mumbai’s gateway to the future. However, 23 years after a committee headed by J.R.D. Tata mooted it, the airport at Navi Mumbai is yet to see the light of day.

It was touted as Mumbai’s gateway to the future. However, 23 years after a committee headed by J.R.D. Tata mooted it, the airport at Navi Mumbai is yet to see the light of day. The project was to have been completed by 2012, but is stuck in red tape and environmental issues.

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The need for a second airport for Mumbai is compelling. Handling 20 million passengers a year, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is India’s busiest. However, it simply can’t manage the growing number of air travellers.

Even after it is expanded, its capacity would rise to 40 million passengers a year.

But this number is dwarfed by the passenger forecast for the next two decades — 91 million a year by 2031.

The solution lies 35 km away in Panvel, where the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) has planned the new airport on a 2,053-hectare site.

In its initial years, the airport’s capacity will be 10 million passengers a year, rising to 40 million by 2022.
However, even before a bidder could be found, the project has hit a roadblock.

About 30 per cent of the site is part of the coastal regulatory zone (CRZ), where no construction can take place without special clearance from the Union Environment Ministry.

The ministry is keen that the legal process is followed, including submission of an Environmental Impact Assessment Report before work begins. CIDCO commissioned the report to institutions like IIT. Urban Development Secretary T.C. Benjamin said: “The report would be submitted to CIDCO by January-end.”

“If everything goes as planned, work should start from mid-2010. The airport will be functional with basic services from 2013-end,” a senior CIDCO official said on condition of anonymity.

“CIDCO is in the process of completing compensatory afforestation of mangroves that would be destroyed and diversion of rivers flowing through the proposed site. We are hoping for an Environment Ministry nod by February 2010,” Benjamin said.

Apart from getting clearances, CIDCO still has to acquire 457 hectares from villages on the site. This could give rise to rehabilitation issues.

But, CIDCO MD G.S. Gill had told Hindustan Times earlier, “Work orders will be issued in March-April 2010.”