Airport decision brightens North Malabar’s hopes

Kannur: Will it be another “missed touch”? And this is what most of the the people in the region are asking when the news regarding the sanction of the Union Cabinet for the Kannur airport came out on Thursday, in spite of the high hopes on the likely economic, social, industrial transformation the project would bring about in the region.
Evidently, the reasons for the people turning cynical about or being led to the point of getting fed up with the airport are not without basis.
It was in September 1996 when C.M. Ibrahim was the Union Civil Aviation Minister under the then Prime Minister I.K. Gujral that the green signal came first for the establishment of an airport here.
The president of the North Malabar Chamber of Commerce Haji C.H. Aboobacker had made a representation to Ibrahim in this connection.
Acquisition of land for the airport began in 1996 itself under the then Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar at Mattanur.
The airport proposal was virtually grounded when A.K. Antony took over as the Chief Minister.There was no dearth of technical reasons to wind up the project, and the main reason cited was that the location selected for the airport was within a perimeter of 150 km from the nearest Kozhikode airport.
The airport remained quietly in the cold storage for nearly a decade even as politicians, industrialists and organisations of traders continued to make some feeble attempts to get it revived.
In an unexpected bid, possibly made in response to the growing public demand, the Airport Authority of India sent a team of experts more than a year ago to conduct a study on the project.
The main purpose of the expert team’s visit was to find out how the establishment of an airport in Kannur would affect the functioning of airports in Kozhikode and Mangalore.
A favourable report from the AAI followed, and then again a long delay for environmental and technoeconomic clearance.
18/01/08 P Divakaran

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Categories: Airports Jan 2008, New Jan 2008