The Maharashtra cabinet on Wednesday gave formal approval to City and Industrial Development Corporation's plans to develop second airport for the city in Navi Mumbai area.
The cabinet approval allows CIDCO to call global bids for this Rs 10,000-crore (Rs 100 billion) project once they receive detailed project report.
The CIDCO has received the inception report from its consultant Louis Burger and are expecting the DPR from them within next four to five months and after that, we will be inviting global bids, said senior official from CIDCO.
The project will require around 2,000 hectare lands, out of which 1,150 hectare is in CIDCO's possession and around 450 hectares in other government agencies and rest need to be acquired. This is spread in seven villages and around 4,000 families will have to be rehabilitated.
At present, Mumbai airport has capacity to handle 20 million passengers annually, which will go up after modernisation to 40 million. However, by 2013 this capacity will be completely utilised and there will be need to have second air port.
If things go by schedule prepared by the CIDCO, airport will be operational by 2012 and it will generate 10 million traffic in the year of inception.
