Forest land bypassed for airport expansion

KOLHAPUR: Suggesting a few changes to the airport development land, the district collector has proposed to shift the isolation bay to the right side of the strip instead of acquiring the forest land in the Gadmudshingi village. This piece of land is already in possession of the airport authority of India (AAI).
The recommendation is regarded as a major breakthrough for the pending proposal of airport development for which 10 hectares of land was needed to create some facility on the left side of the air strip.The report containing the details of expansion has been submitted to the higher authorities.
The airport authority of India (AAI) has already received 223 hectares of land from the state government after the latter acquired it for expansion of the existing airport. The proposal for acquisition of 10 hectares of land was under consideration because of the proposed construction of isolation bay for the aircraft movement.
Saini said, "The isolation bay was proposed on the left side of the airstrip, where 10 hectares of land was available. The land is used for cultivation of vegetation and is also part of Gadmudshingi village, which was not passing a resolution to handover the land to AAI. We later realised that we can construct the isolation bay on the land available on right side of the airstrip, which is already in AAI's possession."
On June 9, district guardian secretary Rajagopal Devara asked the authorities to take a fresh look at the assets in possession of the government and consider whether airport can be expanded with the available land. Devara was then in the city to review the various pending issues of development in the district.
The existing length of the air strip does not support landing of planes with more than 100 passenger capacity. Hence the proposal for airport expansion was mooted by the earlier state government by handing over 223 hectares of land to the AAI. After the change of guard in November 2014, the state government pushed for the airport development with district guardian minister Chandrakant Patil and Kolhapur member of parliament Dhananjay Mahadik holding several meetings in Mumbai with the regional officer of AAI.
Earlier, it was planned that Kolhapur airport would get a proper night landing facility, which would push some airlines to start a scheduled flight service from Kolhapur to Mumbai. Once such service is made available, it will lead to talks of expansion of the airport, for which sizeable amount is required. The new directives of the technical committee has changed the priorities. While it looked like the district administration had only one option of acquiring land of Gadmudshingi village, Devara came up with the land measurement proposal. Devara has served in the city as a district collector, chief executive officer of zilla parishad and commissioner of Kolhapur municipal corporation in the last few year.
There was a proposal for acquisition of some land for divisional sports complex in the city with allotment of a piece of land in. Later, it was found insufficient, prompting the administration to draft land acquisition proposal adjacent to the given land. It received strong opposition for years. Hanumant Pawar, the district collector of Kolhapur in 2004 decided to measure the land allotted to the divisional sports complex and found that given plot is much larger than its size mentioned on the papers. The measuring solved the problem and he immediately transferred entire land in the name of divisional sports complex and the project went through. Similar situation is repeated again in Kolhapur after 12 years.