Jubilee Post News & Views
Mohan Sinha
How many of you who fly to Pune are aware of the history behind its airport? Pune doesn’t have an airport that it can call its own – not technically, at least. In 1939, the Royal Air Force established an airfield in then Poona to provide air cover for Bombay during World War II. It remained an airstrip well into the 1990s.
The writer remembers landing at the airstrip in Poona in an Indian Airlines Avro in 1972, as a 14-year-old. There was a tin shed that was opened 30 minutes before the flight landed! A few chairs were laid out. Once the flight landed, an official on the ground checked the tickets and allowed the passengers to leave. Once the aircraft departed, the shed was locked and the watchman and the airline official left.
Today, the Pune International Airport is a full-fledged civil airport operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) at Lohagaon Air Force Station. In other words, it is situated on land that belongs to the Indian Air Force. That is also why passengers are told during landing and take-off not to click pictures of the IAF jets parked there or even when they are waiting to depart to their destinations. It is a punishable offence.
It was only when the 21st century dawned that Pune airport began to get busy. In 2005, when the plan to hold Commonwealth Youth Games was announced in Pune, a ₹100crore plan to modernise the airport was launched in preparation for the games. In August 2008, AAI completed the construction of two new terminal extensions for international passenger departures and arrivals. Now, the airport also has new aerobridges and new departure terminals. However, the main problem – that of a new civilian airport – remains.
Apart from domestic flights, some international flights also began to use Pune albeit with 737s. Wide-bodied jumbos were still a no-go here because of the short runway. Today, the airport handles thousands of passengers daily. In May 2021, a report published on the portal Statista said that in 2020, Pune was the tenth busiest airport in the country with 8.09 million passengers.
For nearly a decade or more a debate has raged about the need for another international airport in the city because of its growing number of domestic and international flights and because the IAF has been wanting more land to accommodate its growing fleet. The IAF has also made clear often enough that the runway that is used by civilian aircraft and its jets belongs to them and they would like to have it back sooner or later since Pune is also the headquarters of the South Command.
In October 2016, the State government, then under the BJP-Sena, approved a proposed airport in Purandar, near Pune, to be called the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Raje Airport. The problem was that of the nearly 2,000 hectares required only some 45 acres was controlled by the various government agencies. The rest was privately owned by landowners and farmers and that has led to the usual delays.
The irony is that every new government that takes over the State speaks for a new airport in Pune and the need to acquire land in the outskirts of the city. The minute that happens the opposition starts to protest and villagers living in those areas join the chorus demanding compensation that is curiously never enough. Before Purandar was earmarked for the project, the name of Khed taluka, also on the outskirts, was being discussed but this too fell through because of protests by villagers.
On May 8, 2018, the Civil Aviation Ministry finally approved the construction of a new international airport at Purandar near Pune. It appointed the Maharashtra Airport Development Corporation (MADC) as the nodal agency for implementing the project. The funds required at that time was Rs 6,000 crores. Now it is 2021, and the new airport is expected to cost Rs 14,000 crores.
On March 5, 2019, the Maharashtra cabinet of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis approved the setting up of a special purpose vehicle (SPV). At that time, the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) was a major stakeholder in the SPV with a 51 per cent stake and MADC would hold a 19 per cent stake.
After the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of Uddhav Thackeray came to power in November 2019, even as protests continued,Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar stated that the paperwork had been completed for the Purandar airport and dispatched to the Centre. Pawar believed that the compensation paid to private landowners/villagers would be four times the ready reckoner rate. It was decided that that would be the best option as the government could not provide alternate plots of land or technical jobs as and when the airport came up.
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However, because of the protests, Pawar also directed the authorities to study the feasibility of developing the airport at an alternative site to the one at Purandarthat included some villages of Baramati as well, the hometown of his uncle Sharad Pawar.
In short, despite all the meetings, announcements and promises, the talk of a new airport for Pune has remained just that – talk. Going by all accounts the plans for an alternate airport for Pune, metaphorically speaking, are still only in the air.
