PM pushes 2nd Mumbai airport,Jairam grounds it

He then opened up the question of the Rewas-Mandwa site that was selected about a decade ago and dropped due to massive protests from villagers. The alternate site where the airport is being planned has already been identified and land acquisition proceedings started.

But Ramesh has turned the clock back and asked why the state government considered the Rewas-Mandwa site as “more sensitive” than the present one.

“The MoE&F (Ministry of Environment and Forests) is not clear on what basis this assertion is being made by the state government,” he wrote.

This has left the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Maharashtra government baffled. All these arguments had been gone through over the past five years and it was the PM,as in-charge of Environment Ministry during the last months of the previous term,who directed his officials to find a solution to the problems the new site was facing because of being in the CRZ and the presence of mangroves.

On February 10,Principal Secretary to PM T K A Nair held a meeting with all officials concerned where it was decided to follow the same route for Navi Mumbai as was done to build airports in Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. This route required making exception to the CRZ notification just like it was done in these two places.

Subsequently,the Law Ministry was roped in and finally on May 15,the amendment was made to the CRZ Act. Within a month after Ramesh took over as the new Environment Minister,he started raising concerns over the “ecological damage” the new airport would cause.

Defending his stand during the Idea Exchange programme at The Indian Express on Tuesday,Ramesh said that the region had mangrove forests which cannot be re-grown. “We have asked CIDCO (City Industrial and Development Corporation) to do a detailed environment impact assessment of this location. They have hired IIT Bombay and it could take anywhere between 9 to 12 months… We should find a way of building an international airport which does not involve loss of mangrove areas and valuable marshy land… If the mangroves can be regenerated,we can go ahead. If they can’t,we may have to look at other options,” he said.

The Navi Mumbai airport is critical for Mumbai because major expansion is ruled out in the existing airport. Given that the air traffic projections for the city are only increasing,it was decided to press ahead with the Navi Mumbai airport which will help ease pressure from the current airport and cater to long-term demand.

It is envisioned as a state-of-the art airport with two parallel runways that would broad and big enough to accommodate the Airbus 380s.