Lalatendu Mishra
MUMBAI: The over one and half decades wait for the second airport of Mumbai at Navi Mumbai is going to end as the GVK led Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), which owns and operates the existing airport in the city, finally winning the bid to construct and operate the new airport.
Though four bidders namely GMR Airports Ltd, MIAL, MIA Infrastructure Ltd (a joint venture of Tata Realty and VINCI Airport Concessions) and Voluptas Developers Pvt Ltd (a consortium of Hiranandani Group and Zurich Airports) were pre qualified in bidding stage since in May 2015, only two of them submitted the financial bids the process of which started on February 5, 2017.
As per the bids which opened on Monday, GMR Airports Ltd offered an annual gross revenue share of 10.44% while MIAL offered 12.60% share of the annual gross revenue of the project making it the highest bidder.
City & Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO) which had invited financial bids for the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) to select a joint venture partner for this project said the final decision about the award of the project will be taken by the state cabinet.
“The letter of award will be issued to the selected concessioner after the approval of the state cabinet shortly,” CIDCO said in a statement.
The formal announcement making MIAL as the winner is awaited.
Dr. GVK Reddy, Executive Chairman, MIAL and founder Chairman & MD of GVK said, “It is a matter of immense pride for MIAL and GVK to have won the bid for building, developing and operating the greenfield Navi Mumbai International Airport project.”
“We shall remain committed towards creating, designing and managing yet another state-of-the-art airport, and deliver a world-class gateway from Navi Mumbai to the world,” he added.
Though the airport project had received all clearances, the bidding process was derailed on some reason or other forcing CIDCO to postpone the bidding on three occasions. Finally, CIDCO recently stated that if would go ahead with the project even if one bidder came forward.
The Navi Mumbai airport is crucial for Mumbai and the existing airport has crossed the saturation point of 40 million passengers per year and any further delay in the construction of the new airport would severely affect its relevance in the aviation map of the country.
The Mumbai airport was the busiest airport of the country till 2006-7 and due to capacity constraints, air traffic shifted to Delhi which is today India’s biggest.
The Navi Mumbai airport project estimated at Rs 16750 crore ($2.5 billion) will come up on 1,200 hectare of land and will be built in phases.
In the first phase the airport will have one runway and a terminal building which will immediately take the pressure away from the existing airport. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has asked CIDCO to ensure that the first flight must take off by December 2019.
MIAL will now operate that airport for 40 years. The new airport will have a passenger handling capacity of 100 million per year when it become fully functional.
For easier connectivity both airports will be connected via a Metro rail link. The proposed Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link is also expected to provide direct road connectivity to the new airport.
A hill with a height of 250 to 300 metres is being flattened, and a river would be diverted.
Though rehabilitation of project affected people and land acquisition is not fully complete, CIDCO is confident of taking this project off the ground.
