Maya govt scraps plan to expand Meerut airstrip

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Deepa Jainani : Lucknow, Aug 28 2010, 21:20 IST

The ferocious protests and agitations against the land acquisition process for the Yamuna Expressway project at Tappal, in Aligarh, has finally started making its impact felt in other parts of the state as well. Almost two and a half years after the Uttar Pradesh government had kicked off plans for the expansion of the Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar airstrip in Meerut, the administration has pulled back from the process and has canceled the process of land acquisition for the project with immediate effect.

As a result, no further work on acquiring land for the project, nor any other work in this regard will be done.

It may be mentioned that the state government had proposed an international airport at Meerut as the present air strip is used only for unscheduled flights. The project was to be implemented through public private partnership (PPP) on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis. According to sources in the government, the project was high on the chief minister Mayawati's agenda.

As per a study conducted by RITES, an expansion plan for the airport was being proposed on more than 100 acre of land and for this, the government has given an order for acquiring 30 acre of land from about 30 farmers of the area in the first phase.

“Only recently, the civil aviatoin department had issued a notification to to acquire the land under the “emergency clause” and the administration had just about notified the names of the persons whose lands were to be acquired when

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