As elections near, Tamil Nadu to go slow on acquiring land for Hosur airport

Chennai: With elections round the corner and protests erupting in a few places, the DMK dispensation in Tamil Nadu has decided to go slow on the process of acquiring land for building the Hosur airport. About 3,000 acres of land, including 800 acres owned by the government, are to be acquired to build the facility with an annual capacity to handle 3 crore passengers annually.

The government is also planning to write to the Union Government once again seeking airspace for the project -- the Defence Ministry had in January this year expressed its inability in allotting airspace to the Hosur airport citing the operations of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in and around Bengaluru.

“We received a brief response in January on the non-availability of airspace due to HAL’s operations. We are reviewing the response and will write to authorities concerned stressing the need for an airport in Hosur and how the facility will help not just the city but also Bengaluru,” a source told DH.

The source added that there was enough time to sort out the airspace issue since the airport project was still at its nascent stage.

Another source aware of the developments told DH that the Krishnagiri district administration is making corrections to the Land Development Plan for the project as suggested by the Commissioner of Land Administration following which a Government Order (GO) for land acquisition will be issued.

“We are continuing with the work to issue the government order. We might go slow till elections due to some public protests in the area where the airport is to come up. It is just a matter of a few months and this delay won’t have any impact on the project,” the second source said.

“There are protests against acquiring land for the project in some areas but they are not large-scale ones,” the source added.

The source clarified that the land acquisition can begin only after the GO is issued and noted that the government has already floated bids for selecting a consultant to prepare a Detailed Techno-Economic Report (DTER) for developing the airport, besides applying for site clearance from the Union Civil Aviation Ministry.

The airport will come up in the Hosur-Berigai-Bagalur-Shoolagiri quadrilateral with 2,979 acres planned to be acquired from 12 villages.

The LDP plan says 2,134 acres of private land, including agricultural land, have to be acquired for building the airport. Of the 12 villages from where land is likely to be acquired, 10 are located in Hosur taluk and the remaining two in Shoolagiri taluk.

The chosen location for the airport – Berigai-Bagalur -- is close to the Tamil Nadu section of the Bengaluru Satellite Town Ring Road (STRR). Besides passenger traffic, the government believes the new airport will attract freight traffic given Hosur houses over 500 industries and about 3,000 MSME units.

Unwilling to waste time, the government applied for site clearance for the project this month with the Union Civil Aviation ministry, the first of the many approvals needed, even as the process of preparing the LDP was still underway.

Though no airport can be built within 150 km of the Bengaluru International Airport till 2033, the state government believes it can either work out a deal to get an exemption or operationalize the project after the concessionaire agreement ends.

Tamil Nadu also needs a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) due to the concessionaire agreement signed between the airport operator and the Union government that restricts new facilities within 150 km until 2033.