Navi Mumbai airport likely to get green signal soon

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised to stay engaged in pushing the required clearances for the Navi Mumbai airport project.




Mr Singh told Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Friday that efforts would be made to iron out differences between the civil aviation ministry and the ministry of environment and forests.



Mr Chavan led a delegation of Congress ministers and elected representatives to the prime minister to seek environmental clearance for the greenfield airport on the outskirts of Navi Mumbai. Members of the delegation told ET that the prime minister assured early breakthrough in the impasse.



Another positive signal came in Mumbai when the officials of civil aviation ministry and Maharashtra government's Cidco expressed their willingness to modify project modalities to minimise environmental damage at the project site. The civil aviation and Cidco officials told a visiting team of the union environment ministry that the project site would be moved a bit away from the coastal zone to save some part of the mangrove forests and prevent altering the course of one of the two rivers on the site.



The Union ministry for environment and forests (MoEF) under Jairam Ramesh held back clearance for the `9,700 crore project on the ground that it would lead to the destruction of eco system in the area. The state government is now showing willingness to make changes for minimal environmental damage.



Maharashtra government sources told ET that all efforts would be made to get environmental a clearance at the meeting of environment ministry's Experts Appraisal Committee or EAC on September 22. The chief minister told the prime minister that the delay in getting environmental clearance was making the project costlier. "The chief minister pointed out that hold up in getting clearance was causing cost escalation and also putting the project behind schedule.



According to the initial plan, the first runway was supposed to get commissioned in early 2012 but that does not look possible now," a senior bureaucrat who accompanied the chief minister told ET. Last month, the aviation ministry had made a detailed presentation to the EAC and pointed out that delay was putting enormous burden on the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.