More than 90% of land acquisition for expansion of the Coimbatore International Airport has been completed and the State government is in the process of depositing the amount earmarked for the acquisition of lands under litigation to the courts to speed up the procedure, according to Pollachi MP K. Shanmugasundaram.
In a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, the MP said the Government of Tamil Nadu, since May 1, 2021, had allocated ₹ 1,351.83 crores out of which ₹ 1,086.84 crores were disbursed to the land owners.
A total of 235.25 acres have been acquired from the allocation, with 87.31 acres pending out of the total 461 acres of patta land. The remaining defence lands (151 acres) and poramboke land (31 acres) are also under the process of acquisition. The Ministry of Defence has given its approval for the land under its control.
Mr. Shanmugasundaram wanted the present terminal building, which has a maximum capacity of handling 450 departure passengers and 250 arrival passengers at any given time, to be expanded at the earliest to handle an additional 500 passengers.
According to him, more than 90% of the cargo exported from Coimbatore airport are agricultural commodities. In 2021, 495 tonnes of agricultural commodities were exported to Sharjah and in 2022, until July, 390 tonnes were exported to Sharjah and 80 tonnes to Singapore. After 2020, no flights were sanctioned under the Krishi Udan 2.0 scheme. This is detrimental to the farmers of the region as exporters are unable to effectively keep up with the demand for the agricultural commodities, he said.
Stating that the expansion of the runway to 3,810 m to handle wide-bodied aircraft could be done at a later stage, the MP claimed the present runway of 2,990 m is capable enough to handle narrow body aircraft to and from destinations such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Colombo, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. These destinations are the most important for the Tamil diaspora, emigrant workers from the districts in and around Coimbatore and with regard to the exports of agricultural commodities, gold, jewellery and engineering products.
The MP sought the Minister to take cognizance of these issues and pass necessary orders for the upgradation of the terminal building, increase frequency of air services and to allot services under the Krishi Udan 2.0 scheme.
Published - December 14, 2022 06:09 pm IST
