Panel against closure of existing Bangalore airport, Ministry in no mood to comply

Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court has refused to entertain four different PILs asking for the old airport to be kept open to ease pressure regarding both commuting and air traffic. The state Government told the court on Thursday that concerns over infrastructure on the access route to the new airport will be addressed at the time of the opening of the new airport.

Civil Aviation Ministry officials said the Government will discuss the Committee’s recommendations at a meeting on March 10. “Only if there is a sustained public pressure, will there be a move to keep the old airport open,” said the officials, who are in Bangalore for a meeting on Friday to assess whether the new airport will be ready by March 30.

In the course of the PILs in the High Court, advocates for the petitioners argued that the old airport needs to be kept open since the new airport, built for an air traffic capacity of 11 million passengers per annum, will open to passenger traffic of 13 million per annum — the figure projected for 2015. The decision to close the old airport “if implemented, will cause grave injustice to the residents of Bangalore, who will be constrained to commute for two to three hours on congested and deteriorating roads to the new airport, undermining the very purpose of air travel,” the Bangalore City Connect Trust stated in one of the PILs.