MIAL eyeing 26 acres of private land

Mumbai: Exploring all avenues for development, the land-locked Mumbai airport finds itself in a critical dilemma. If the week began with the civil aviation ministry putting in a request to the Empowered Group of Ministers to release 200 acres of saltpan land to rehabilitate encroaching slums, MIAL is now eyeing 26 acres of private land skirting the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) for aviation related development.
Faced with an acute land crunch at the country’s busiest airport, the Mumbai International Airport Private Limited, the consortium headed by GVK, is finding 1964 acres of real estate—276 of which is encroached upon by tightly packed slum colonies—cramping its expansion plans.
Consider this: Delhi airport boasts a 5,160-acre sprawl, while the new Greenfield airports coming up at Bangalore and Hyderabad have 4,050 acres and 5,500 acres respectively. And so MIAL is not sitting tight.
The acquisition of private property is a long-drawn process and would take at least 18 months -that too if there is no opposition from existing landowners.
25/04/07 Lekha Agarwal/Mumbai Newsline

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Categories: Airports Apr 2007