The Union government is planning to build six airports under the public-private partnership (PPP) model in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar adopting a land-pooling model for land acquisition.
The Centre proposes to develop a greenfield airport each in Chennai, Kolkata, Bagdogra, Pune, Varanasi and Nalanda, Civil Aviation Secretary R.N. Choubey told The Hindu . Separately, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will spend ₹18,000 crore in the next four years for expanding its airports.
“We plan to adopt a ‘land-pooling’ approach at places where land is a constraint,” said Mr. Choubey. “It will help remove a lot of obstacles such as fund requirement and resistance from land owners. This model has so far not been adopted in the airport segment,” he said.
Under the model, land owned by different people is pooled together and the owners get back a certain portion of the land in the developed area whose value is much higher than the value of the original land holding. The AAI has hired the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology for studying this model.
The Civil Aviation Secretary said the State governments of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have been asked to identity land for development of airports under this model. “We have asked the States to identify minimum 2,500 acres of land. We will then conduct a technical feasibility of the site,” Mr. Choubey said.
Talks with States
He said the Centre had already held two rounds of meetings with the Tamil Nadu Government for identifying land for developing a second airport for Chennai. The West Bengal Government has informed the Centre that Andal Airport in Durgapur can be developed as the second airport for Kolkata, Mr. Choubey said.
According to sources, the Centre has done a detailed analysis of top 30 airports in a bid to increase the airport capacity in the country. “We are looking at three areas — increasing the efficiency of existing terminals, building new terminals and the need to build new airports,” an official said.
Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha had said last year that the Centre will require funds up to ₹3 lakh crore for doubling the airport capacity over the next 10 to 15 years. According to an internal analysis by the Civil Aviation Ministry, there is a potential for flight operations at 200 airports in the next 10-15 years.
