From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Sep 17: Work on five airport projects – Hassan, Shimoga, Gulbarga, Bellary and Bijapur – have been grounded due to a host of problems like land acquisition disputes, breach of agreements and withdrawal of developers on account financial unviability.

The previous BJP Government has proposed to take up greenfield airports in Gulbarga, Shimoga, Hassan, Bellary and Bijapur with an intention of providing air connectivity to tier II cities and thereby give a boost to economic growth in the districts concerned and surrounding regions.

All the five projects were proposed PPP model but the developers backed out on account of economic slowdown, financial unviability, land acquisition disputes and breach of agreements signed with the government and internal differences among project developers.

Karnataka’s Information and Infrastructure Minister Santosh Lad said work on Gulbarga and Shimoga projects currently stand grounded.

All construction activity has ceased with the two main joint venture partners of the airport projects fighting amongst themselves.

The Government has initiated the process of terminating the contract for the Gulbarga project, Lad said pointing out that the government had even acquired a total 567 acres for it.

Regional Airport-Holdings International Ltd (Rahi), a joint venture between Rahi Aviation Holdings Pvt Ltd (RAH) and IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd (ITNL) had signed MoU with the government for construction of airports in Shimoga and Gulbarga.

But unfortunately both firms have not gone ahead with the work and instead engaged themselves in accusing each other for the delay and have even approached the courts to settle the dispute, the minister said.

The project work in Gulbarga came to a grinding halt last year itself following a dispute between the shareholders over alleged financial irregularities, he said.

Project works on Hassan and Bijapur airports have hit a roadblock with the private agency which got the contract to implement it demanding additional land, which amounts to breach of contract signed through a MoU.

Lad said the Bellary airport project failed to take off due to land acquisition dispute as some farmers had gone to the court challenging the land acquisition proceedings. The Airport Authority of India (AAI) too had declared that the project was unviable, he said.

All five projects have not been shelved, the minister clarified pointing out that the government would explore other possibilities to develop these projects by focusing the stability of the Government as well availability of land to develop these projects.