Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation has been nominated as the entity for selecting private developers for a greenfield airport in Sindhudurg district. The civil aviation ministry recently gave its in-principle approval to the project.
The Rs 492-crore project will come up on 270 hectares of land that is already in state government possession. Speaking to Projectmonitor, the MIDC official concerned said that the airport would be located at Chipi Parule in Vengurla taluka in the southern part of Sindhudurg district. He declined to discuss any other aspect of the project maintaining that it was too early to comment.
Airports Authority of India has established the technical feasibility of the airport that will serve only domestic passengers. The Sindhudurg project aims to decongest the existing Dabolim airport in Goa. The picturesque coastal Sindhudurg district is at the southern end of Maharashtra, bordering Goa and partly Karnataka.
Dabolim Airport in North Goa district is amongst the 13 international airports under AAI's ownership. In 2007-08, Dabolim handled 2.58 million passengers, up 16.6 per cent from the previous year's level. Domestic passengers account for over 80 per cent of total traffic at Dabolim.
For MIDC, this is the second airport after the Pune (Lohegaon) international airport project for which it is the nodal agency and also a 13 per cent shareholder. AAI will also hold 13 per cent with the selected private sector developer holding 74 per cent.
Last year, MIDC joined other agencies like Maharashtra Airport Development Corporation and City & Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra to develop aviation infrastructure in the state. MADC is the nodal agency for several airports like Shirdi, Solapur, Phaltan, Dhulia, Karad, Jalgaon and Chandrapur, apart from Nagpur multimodal international hub. While the Shirdi airport will be greenfield, the other involve upgrade of existing airstrips into full-fledged airports with scheduled flight operations.
Cidco is looking after the greenfield international airport in Navi Mumbai. To be developed with a completion cost of Rs 10,000 crore on a 1,140 hectare plot near Panvel, the Navi Mumbai airport project will adopt the PPP route.