Vehemently opposing the move to acquire land from farmers for a Greenfield international airport proposed at Bhogapuram and citing the performance of various airports on relatively less land, former Agriculture Minister Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao has suggested development of the existing airport by taking 500 acres of the adjacent land from the Navy.
Criticising the Chandrababu Naidu government for issuing a notification on the day the Central Government allowed ordinances on the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 to lapse and also exempting the provisions relating to public consent and social impact assessment from the State government’s Land Acquisition Act, he said of the total of 5300 acres, 3700 acres belong to farmers, most of them small and marginal. As many as 1,200 houses would be lost and two villages totally wiped out and 5,000 families affected, he said here after a visit to the villages.
With 3.77 crore passengers, Chatrapati Shivaji airport at Mumbai was built on 1850 acres. Rebutting the Chief Minister’s justification that the new airport would have cargo terminal, he said the Mumbai Airport was handling 7 lakh tonnes of cargo as well. Chennai with 1.57 crore passengers was located on 1,200 acres and Trivandrum with 32 lakh passengers on 700 acres. Barring the airports at Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru no airport land was in the proportions being proposed for Bhogapuram, he pointed out.
Intelligentsia of the city and mass organisations should also take up the cause, he appealed.
The proposed land acquisition will affect over 5,000 families
Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao
Former Agriculture Minister
