Cidco offers Rs 3.50 cr/ha to buy land for airport

City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco), the nodal agency for the development of Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), has made a fresh offer of a compensation of Rs 3.50 crore (Rs 35 million) per hectare or 22.5 per cent developed land to the project affected persons (PAPs). PAPs have sought time to consider Cidco’s new proposal before they can respond.

R C Gharat, a senior Congress leader and negotiator of PAPs, confirmed Cidco’s new offer made to them last week at the meeting chaired by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. “This is mentioned in Cidco’s presentation. However, we have yet to study the Cidco’s offer,” he noted.

Meanwhile, PAPs have told Cidco that they should be given 35-40 per cent of the developed land. PAPs are taking out morcha on Monday to press for its demand. Earlier, they had turned down Cidco’s and Maharashtra government’s offers to give 12.5 per cent or up to 15 per cent developed land and a monetary compensation of Rs 10 lakh per hectare.

A total of 1,160 hectares are proposed for the airport project of which mangroves are currently spread over 110 hectares. Nearly 80 per cent of the land is under Cidco's acquisition. However, Cidco's negotiations with PAPs for the acquisition of 291 hectares are incomplete.

“Compensation of Rs 3.50 crore per hectare, which is quite high with what has been proposed by any state government agency for such a crucial infrastructure project, is for the acquisition of 291 hectares of private land. The other proposal is to provide 22.5 per cent developed land to PAPs. It is up to PAPs to accept one of these proposals and convey their opinion. Besides, our proposal of providing 22.5 per cent developed land is pending for the approval of the state Cabinet,” a Cidco official, who did not want to be identified, told Business Standard.

Cidco has pegged the total project cost at Rs 14,500 crore (Rs 145 billion), of which Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) would be for phase-I. Of this, the pre-development cost is about Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) - to be spent on land acquisition, rehabilitation of affected villagers and site development. Cidco has also sought financial assistance from the Centre for pre-development costs, while developers have requested viability gap funding for the project.