Airport land acquisition may take 6-8 months

Airport land acquisition may take 6-8 months
M L Kapur - TIMES NEWS NETWORK

11 Dec, 2006 2310hrs IST

HUBLI: The process of acquiring 650 acres of additional land for expansion of the Hubli airport to an international facility will take at least six to eight months after a notification for the same is issued by the government.

Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) will be the agency for land acquisition. Work on upgrading the airport will start only after the land is handed over to Airports Authority of India (AAI) and hence, cannot be expected to be ready before January 2008.

During a preliminary survey of the area identified in the AAI master plan for the expansion project last week, district revenue officials found that a total of 155 houses will have to be demolished in colonies in the vicinity of the existing airport.

Deputy commissioner M S Shrikar, who recently held a meeting with owners of the affected houses, said there may be slight variation in the exact number of houses to be acquired after a detailed survey on the basis of the notification.

He said the owners were now reconciled to the fact that acquisition of their houses was unavoidable. Their main concerns were the compensation package offered to them and the time frame for the acquisition process.

Shrikar told them not to be influenced by middlemen promising them exclusion of their houses or giving any false hopes about higher compensation. He said it would be based on "just and fair evaluation of their properties,which would take six to eight months after the notification."

He said if they agreed to "consent award" with the KIADB, they can hope to get better compensation compared to the one under the Land Acquisition Act, and the time taken to complete the process will also be relatively less.

Another demand of the affected people was allotment of alternate sites. The deputy commissioner clarified that there was no such provision under the acquisition process.However, he promised to study what was done in case of Mangalore airport.

Nonetheless, Shrikar said he will make a note of their demand in his report to the government,which he hoped to submit soon to enable the government to take a final decision. At present, the airport can take only up to 50-seater aircraft.

Earlier, the government was pushing to upgrade it as national airport capable of taking Airbus A-320 aircraft. But, at a meeting held in Bangalore last month, it was felt that it will be a problem to acquire additional land if the government later wants to upgrade it as an international airport.