Pact on airport to be signed on Jan 24

Pact on airport to be signed on Jan 24

Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel will lay the foundation stone for the expansion work of the Mangalore airport.

Deccan Herald

The Share Holders’ Agreement (SHA) for the long-pending Bangalore International Airport will be signed in the garden city on January 24, in the presence of the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel.

Mr Patel will be in Karnataka on January 24 to lay the foundation stone for the expansion work of the Mangalore airport as well for signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Hassan and Gulbarga airports.

The SHA for the Bangalore International Airport will actually be a revised agreement since the first one lapsed in September. Karnataka Government sources told Deccan Herald on Tuesday that the State support and land lease agreements were likely to be signed on January 15 in Bangalore. The State forwarded the draft agreements regarding State support, land lease as well as SHA to the Bangalore International Airports Limited (BIAL) on Monday.

In an interesting development, the sources said as against the 400 acres that the State government asked the BIAL to return, 263 acres would be given back to the consortium, albeit in a different area.

The decision asking the BIAL to return the 400 acres at the State Cabinet meeting on December 21 was actually because of a technical reason. It related to the change in alignment for the second runway which in any case will not be constructed in the first phase.

As against these 400 acres, the BIAL has asked the State government to earmark 263 acres in an adjoining area for the new runway.

The government has agreed to give this land to the BIAL and the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board has been asked to identify the area and acquire it for the BIAL. After the cabinet meeting, the State government had made it look as though the BIAL had acquired 400 acres more than what was required and that it was asking the company to return the land.

Despite the earlier stand of the coalition government that the State support of Rs 350 crore was scaled up and this amount should be reduced, the figure has not changed in actual terms.

In the final draft it has been stated that the State support would be a minimum of Rs 275 crore and a maximum of Rs 350 crore (inclusive of Rs 75 crore which is kept as “contingency” to be used if required).