IGI tunnel hits Army roadblock

New Delhi: A month after work on a tunnel road under IGI Airport's main runway began, the project has hit a roadblock. About 2.8 acres of land required for providing access to the six-laned, 1.5-km-long tunnel road — that will link the Dwarka roundabout near the domestic airport to the international terminal — belongs to the armed forces, which has asked the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to deposit Rs 35 crore with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The idea is that DDA will allot the armed forces an alternate plot of the same value elsewhere.
This demand has set alarm bells ringing in the aviation ministry as it's the state government's responsibility to provide connectivity to the upcoming new terminal 3 (T3). "Since the state was not able to provide an additional road link in time for the T3 opening in July, AAI offered to give this alternate route through airport land so that passengers are saved from jams on the single approach road. But AAI is not going to bear the financial burden of this project," said a senior official. The project is expected to cost Rs 70 crore which the Delhi government has agreed to bear but any cost overrun may have to be borne by central agencies like DDA, but there is no agreement on that yet.
11/05/10 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports May 2010