Greater Noida airport project may take off

GMR evinces interest in the project.

Delhi will soon have a second airport in suburban Greater Noida. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati today met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and requested him to revive the Taj International Airport and Aviation Hub project, which her government had conceived in 2003-04, before Mulayam Singh Yadav ousted her from power.

Officials in the Union civil aviation ministry said Mayawati got an assurance that the subject would be taken up for approval soon. The proposed greenfield airport is expected to come up at Zewar near Greater Noida.

Although the existing Delhi airport is being overhauled to accommodate higher traffic, analysts estimate that it will reach saturation point by 2015 and then the need for a second airport will be felt.

The GMR Group, which is currently operating Delhi Airport, has the first right of refusal to develop the second airport that may come up near Delhi. Thus, the company can get to develop the Greater Noida airport as well, if it chooses to exercise its right.

Senior GMR executives said the group would definitely be interested in the proposed new airport. "We will take a call on this project, which will be complementary to Delhi airport, once it is ready for global tender," the executives added.

"If the airport comes up when the existing one is saturated, it will be helpful in decongesting the existing airport. But if it comes up before that, it will eat into the revenues of the existing airport, if it is managed by an airport developer other than GMR," said Amrit Pandurangi of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The then National Democratic Alliance regime at the Centre had cleared the techno-feasibility report for setting up the ambitious Taj International Airport and Aviation Hub, which was targeted to be completed and operated by the end of 2008. The Taj International Aviation Hub was to be developed on the lines of similar hubs in Singapore, Bangkok and London's Heathrow.

The new international airport was proposed to be built at an approximate cost of Rs 5,000 crore on an area of 1,000 hectares. The project was to be executed with private participation under the build-operate-Transfer scheme.

It got a greater boost in 2006 when the minimum distance between an existing airport and a new one was reduced from 150 km to 75 km.