With the Supreme Court upholding the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to acquire land for the expansion and modernisation of the Chennai airport earlier this month, work on the project is finally on fast track. The Rs 2,700-crore modernisation plan is set to get the clearance of public investment board (PIB) on Tuesday.

“Land acquisition issues that were holding the project back have now been sorted out. The project will be cleared by PIB on July 29 after which it will come up for Cabinet approval,” said a source in the Ministry of Civil Aviation. PIB clearance of the Chennai airport comes even as the Rs 2,000-crore Kolkata airport revamp bid is set to get the Cabinet nod later this week.

Modernisation of the Chennai airport has been delayed by over seven months due to problems in acquiring around 136 acres of land necessary for the first phase of the project. Airports Authority of India (AAI) plans to utilise the acquired land to construct a second runway, parallel to the existing 12,000-feet main runway and extend the 6,500-feet cross runway that has been in operation since December.

The existence of two parallel runways would enhance the airports handling capacity to 50 flights an hour and allow it to meet the demands of air traffic until at least 2016. The airport can currently handle 28 aircraft movements an hour. While phase 1 now seems to be set for clearance, phase 2 is still contentious since it involves acquisition of over 1,000 acres that would lead to major rehabilitation issues.

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