The Navi Mumbai International Airport proposal continues to face opposition due environmental and displacement issues. Locals feel cheated by the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) — which is developing the project — and complain of not having been taken into confidence.
Authorities maintain that there is no backtracking on the selection of the site. An Expert Appraisal Committee under the Ministry of Environment is set to discuss the clearance of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report submitted by CIDCO on July 21. This will decide the fate of the airport proposal.
Chances are strong that even if the deadlock is resolved, the existing problems may add considerable time and cost to the current estimate.
Villagers' grievances
According to government figures, seven villages with a total population of around 15,000 will have to be relocated. The villagers have formed a committee named the Navi Mumbai International Airport Project Affected People. While they support the project, they feel cheated that CIDCO had failed to keep its earlier promises. “We are confused, we have never been taken into confidence,” complained Pandharinath Keni, chairperson of the committee.
The members told The Hindu that CIDCO had earlier conducted many public hearings with villagers, but to no avail. “We now want a written agreement,” said S. K. Naik, vice-chairperson of the committee.
Three demands
Mr. Keni said the committee had only three demands: “That CIDCO should remunerate us according to the current market rate of the land; that they should regularise the houses that were built outside the village boundary; and that CIDCO should soon settle the pending cases of those families who have not yet been given 12.5 per cent of the cultivable land.”
The land outside the boundary of the village was bought by CIDCO around two decades ago. Since then the village limits have not changed. Now the population has expanded and settled on that land. The villagers want this “encroachment” regularised and remunerated.
But they have no complaints about the site of relocation.
The officials confirmed that the resettlement plan was drawn amicably after taking into consideration the occupation patterns. “Those who had land near the river have been allotted new land near the river. Even fishing communities have been planned to be resettled accordingly,” a senior official said.
Mumbai has only one airport. Though its annual capacity is 20 million passengers, it handles 26 million passengers. The peak saturation level of the airport is 40 million passengers will be reached by 2015. This has led to the proposal of a new international airport.
The proposed airport will conform to International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) specifications. According to the CIDCO website, the airport is expected to absorb 10 million passengers annually in its first operational year 2012, doubling to 20 million by 2020 followed by 30 million passengers in 2025 and ultimately 40 million by 2030.
The estimated project cost is pegged at Rs. 9,625 crore. The project will be completed in four phases over 30 years.
