Pune on track for new international airport

The city seems to be finally on track to get its own independent single runway international airport as the state government has appointed a private consultant to see the project through and initiated the process to notify close to 1,000 hectares of land near Rajgurunagar for the airport. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), the nodal agency for developing the greenfield airport, has appointed Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS) as consultants and it will notify the required land within a month for fast track clearance of the project. With the new site — nicknamed Chakan II — receiving the vital in-principle approval from the Indian Air Force (IAF) in the form of a letter on November 9, MIDC is concurrently working on several fronts to speed up the project. This gains significance as the earlier project to develop an airport at Chakan was scrapped at an advanced stage after IAF refused to grant permission. “The in-principle approval by IAF has come as a major boost for the project. A decision has been taken by the high-powered committee to notify the land for the new site.

Several steps are going on concurrently and once the land has been acquired, we will be able to move fast,” MIDC chief executive officer Rajiv Jalota said. MIDC also hopes that by appointing IL&FS, it will be able to hasten work as the firm was also the consultant for the scrapped Chakan airport. “The decision has been to basically extend their contract for the new project. A lot of time will get saved as they have already generated a lot of data on Chakan,” Jalota said. The firm is experienced in handling greenfield airports and was the consultant for the Bangalore airport, he added. While IL&FS will create a detailed techno feasibility report on the project, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) will give the final nod to the airport. According to the conditions laid down in the IAF letter of November 9, a joint working group of IAF, AAI and Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials will need to be structured to draw out the air routes and alignment of the runway. With MIDC also planning an Inland Container Depot (ICD) near the airport, officials say that the project has top priority, as it will boost investments in the region.

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