The government on Thursday (9 February) informed the Parliament that six greenfield airports have been operationalised in the country since 2019.
These six airports include two international airports in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar and Goa’s Mopa.
“Since 2019, six Greenfield airports namely, Kalaburagi (project cost Rs 175.57 crore), Orvakal (Kurnool) (project cost Rs 187 crore), Sindhudurg (project cost Rs 520 crore), Itanagar (project cost Rs 646 crore), Kushinagar (project cost Rs 448 crore) and Mopa (project cost Rs 2,870 crore) have been operationalised, out of which Kushinagar and Mopa airports are International airports,” Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation General (Retired) V K Singh said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.
The minister said that the Centre had formulated a Greenfield Airports (GFA) Policy, 2008 which provides detailed guidelines, procedures and steps related to construction of greenfield airports across the country.
Under the GFA Policy, the project proponent — an airport developer or the respective state government willing to establish a greenfield airport — is required to send a proposal to the Civil Aviation Ministry in the prescribed format for a two-stage approval process i.e., ‘Site Clearance’ followed by ‘In-Principle’ approval.