Mumbai: Two hundred acres of land ruined, 22 villages razed to the ground and more than one lakh persons left homeless.
No, this is not the end result of the Maharashtra government's ambitious plan for a second airport for Mumbai. There is more to it.
The government's plans to have a $3.5 bn-worth airport in the Awas village have another serious flaw.
There are concerns about the fact that the runway of this proposed airport might be right over a gas pipeline.
"The main thing is there is a gas pipeline going right across the land supplying gas to RCF. Are you going to have an airport over a gas pipeline?" Captain D S Mathur, former managing director of Air India, asked.
While the government says that there are four other plans for airports in Navi Mumbai and has also accepted that the proposals for the airport at Rewas has not been totally dropped.
Moreover, it does not have detailed information of the runway coming up on the gas pipeline.
"Basically we have to get more information about the gas pipeline and what damages it will cause. As we are not that serious, we have not gone into those details," Rajesh Tope, Minister of State for Urban Development, said.
Analysts say that this decision by the government will be no good for the environment, but their major concern is how secure will the airport be if it is going to be constructed on a gas pipeline.
It just shows how the planners missed such an important point in the possible construction of an airport in an already fragile zone.
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