Under the current law, cost of acquiring land had shot up significantly
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) may adopt the land pooling approach followed in States such as Gujarat, and Maharashtra for land acquisition for building airports, its chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said.
“With the tightening of the Land Acquisition Act, it has become almost impossible to acquire land for States,” Mr. Mohapatra said.
“Land pooling has been effective in Gujarat and has also been tried in Amaravati and in Mumbai for slum development work. So, we called [for] a meeting of experts from these States to discuss the viability of land pooling,” he said.
AAI has asked the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology to study the model followed by these States on land pooling. Under the model, land owned by different people is pooled together and the land owners get back a certain portion of the land in the developed area whose value is much higher than the value of the original land holding.
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Mr.Mohapatra said airports required huge area of land for both airside and cityside development for setting up hotels and and other amenities around the airport.
“You need to acquire at least 10-15% land for commercial use from cityside besides acquiring land for constructing terminal building,” Mr. Mohapatra said.
At present, AAI follows a policy where State Governments provide the land free of cost. However, under the Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, the cost of acquiring land for State governments had shot up significantly as the compensation was higher. This had a direct bearing on the overall project cost. Citing Navi Mumbai, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said the land acquisition cost was more than the airport’s construction cost.
