Controversy dogs India's biggest industrial project

Nagpur: The ambitious Multi-modal International Hub Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN), or cargo hub project as it is popularly known, is dogged by an exasperating blame game between Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and top officials of the state-owned Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC) set up to run it.
While the infrastructural works of the multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to which the MIHAN project is aligned are apace, a question mark hangs over the conjoint project as such because of the central ministry's reluctance to hand over the Nagpur airport to the MADC.
The cold war between Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh of the Congress and Patel of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) over the Rs.100 billion (about $2.5 billion) project has perturbed several industrial giants including IT majors that have bought land in the SEZ.
The transfer of the airport to the MADC, crucial for the gigantic project's progress according to its executive head R.C. Sinha, is being delayed on one pretext or the other despite repeated promises made by the civil aviation ministry's Airports Authority of India (AAI) over the last three years.
Reiterating his "in-principle" agreement to hand over the airport to the MADC, Patel, at an interaction with the press here Friday, attributed the delay to the state government's failure to fulfil certain obligations.
Repudiating the minister's posers, MADC general manager Ramesh Yaul said the formation of a joint venture company of the MADC and the AAI as insisted upon by the central ministry was delayed because of the latter.
29/07/07 IANS/Economic Times

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Jul 2007, Cargo Jul 2007, New Jul 2007