MIAL in quay over slum resettlement

Mumbai: As the Mumbai International Airport Private Limited (MIAL)—the joint venture between GVK-SA consortium and the Airports Authority of India—rang in its first anniversary today, slum dwellers encroaching prime real estate at India’s busiest gateway, the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA), protested their impending eviction from this land.
Spread over 276 acres of airport land or in 31 slum pockets that dot the airport periphery, nearly 80,000 families must go for the extension and development of CSIA. Now integrated under the banner of ‘Mumbai Airport Slum Dwellers Federation’, these slum dwellers—who have been voicing their opposition to being resettled in Dahisar and Mankhurd—are now also giving the thumbs-down to the government’s most recent option of rehabilitating them on salt-pan lands.
About ten days ago, at the instance of the Civil Aviation Ministry, the Group of Ministers led by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had asked the Maharashtra government to release salt-pan land for the resettlement of the slum dwellers encroaching on airport land. The Ministry is pushing for tracts of land that would only require a change in the land use for the same.
Even as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA)-the nodal agency for resettlement and rehabilitation appointed by MIAL—is looking into what are the feasible options, slum dwellers remain adamant.
03/05/07 Lekha Agarwal/Mumbai Newsline

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Categories: Airports May 2007