Ministry asks TN for fresh proposal for Chennai airport

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2006 08:00:55 PM]

NEW DELHI: Civil Aviation Ministry has asked the Tamil Nadu government to come with a fresh proposal after the state authorities were conveyed about the inability to carry out modernisation of the Chennai airport without proper land area. The Tamil Nadu government has informed the avitaion ministry that it would come up with a fresh proposal within the next fortnight, civil aviation Praful Patel told reporters in New Delhi. The state government proposal will detail the availability of land that is required for the expansion and modernisation of the airport.

Mr Patel met the communications and information technology minister Dayanidhi Maran, the Lok Sabha MP from Cenral Chennai constituency, to discuss the Chennai airport modernisation plan. The government would decide on due course of the airport modernisation after receving the final report from Tamil Nadu, Mr Patel said.

He said any modern airport should have parallel runway but the state government had informed that it does not want to displace people living around the airport area. The state government will come back to the ministry in next fortnight on how progress can be made by at least having a parallel runway, which is must under the new international standard guidelines, Patel said.

The state government has favoured the modernisation of Anna International Airport in Chennai on the basis of private-public partnership along the lines for Delhi and Mumbai airports. The civil aviation minstry would embark upon the modernisation process after reaching a mutually agreed decision with the state government. For the modernisation of these two metro airports, as a first step, the government has floated bids to appoint global advisors.

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