THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 1 September 2007 — Kerala has decided to expedite work on its fourth international airport in the northern Kannur district, nearly a year after it received a federal green signal.
The government decided to recruit 87 staff to help acquire 2,000 acres of land for the project at Moorkanparamba 30km away from the Kannur city through “fast track”, Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said.
“We will complete land acquisition within six months so that the work on the airport can be started without delay,” he told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had recently assured Kerala that the final clearance to the project would be given as soon as the land acquisition is complete. The government acquired 300 acres of land eight years ago when the late E.K. Nayanar, who led the campaign for the airport, was the chief minister.
The government will redeploy three special officers, a survey expert and recruit supporting staff on contract basis to speed up work. The airport is expected to give momentum to the growth of the economically backward region, which is now attracting large number of holidaymakers.
The airport, which would also be a boon to the huge expatriate community from the region, has already received clearance from the Defense and Civil Aviation ministries and is waiting for a final nod from the Union Cabinet.
The project was cleared “in-principle” in 1998 by former Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim, who hails from the region. But it got delayed due to objections from officials citing the presence of two airports, Mangalore and Calicut, within a radius of 150 km. It took long to clear this obstacle and receive a techno-economic feasibility clearance for the airport.
Kerala wants the Kannur airport to be built by private entrepreneurs without any financial help from the Airports Authority of India under a build-operate-transfer model. The Left Democratic Party (LDF) has already ruled out the public-private-partnership model on the lines of the successful Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) saying it would delay the project.
Hotel baron Capt. Krishnan Nair of Leela Group has proposed to build the airport on build-own-operate basis in collaboration with Singapore’s Changi airport, a major aviation hub in Asia. The state government is yet to respond to the proposal.
Patel recently assured Kerala Home and Tourism Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan of a waiver on the stipulation that all new airports of the country should have a second runway. Besides Cochin, the state also boasts of two other international airports, Trivandrum and Calicut, on its 600-km stretch.
