Jairam, Maha CM’s joint show to green-light new airport

First impressions tend to last. And Maharashtra's new chief minister Prithviraj Chavan is set to make a big one. In what will be his first official press conference after taking over, Chavan is scheduled to give a formal go-ahead to the new airport in Navi Mumbai - one that was proposed nine years and four chief ministers ago.

In a move that he hopes will take the spotlight away from the Adarsh scam, Chavan - along with Union Enviroment Minister Jairam Ramesh - will hold a giant media conference clearing the much-delayed and controversy ridden Navi Mumbai Airport. The state government is planning to bill this as the new CM's first gift to the state.

The new airport, which will be able to handle an additional 60 million passengers each year, is set to change the dynamics of the city.

Also, aviation authorities have made it clear that no additional flight operations will be allowed from the CST Airport, which they say will reach saturation point due to heavy air traffic by 2013.

The proposed airport in Navi Mumbai, however, has had its share of delays - most of them because of opposition from the environment ministry headed by Ramesh. While Ramesh had given a conditional go ahead for the airport last week, sources say it was Chavan’s relationship with the Prime Minister’s Office -- where he worked for six years -- that helped rubber-stamp the deal so quickly.

"Ramesh had been opposing the airport for a while now over environmental concerns but the PMO recently intervened. We believe Chavan got the PMO to intervene in Maharshtra’s favour," an official said on condition of anonymity.
In fact, according to a top bureaucrat in the know, the announcement was supposed to be made on Monday. However, a decision was taken to hold it once the furore surrounding the resignation of telecom minister A Raja had died down. Also, they wanted to complete the induction of Congress ministers into the new cabinet. Sources also said that the hospitalisation of NCP chief Sharad Pawar was a factor as an announcement as big as this at this stage would not have gone down well with the NCP.

The Navi Mumbai airport has been stumbling from one controversy to another, with the union enviroment ministry’s biggest issue being with the fact that the airport would be gobbling up a substantial portion of mangroves in the vicinity and that it would entail changing the course of two rivers.

According to party sources, the new regime wanted to blunt the negativity arising from the Adarsh scam – which cost the previous CM Ashok Chavan his job – by making a major infrastructure announcement , and they zeroed in on this project.