The government’s latest submission on the Mopa airport, supposedly as some sort of a justification for the project, that the airport will be built at no cost to the government, is intended to mislead.
The Parsekar government has very conveniently decided not to monetize the massive cost of acquiring 84 lakh square meters for the airport, a lot of it taken almost forcibly from 1000-odd people of the area. That is not just a massive human cost but in real terms, the windfall profit to the developer at the cost of the state is mind boggling. Let’s look at these figures:
381 acres of land will be given to the airport developer with a super FAR of 2.5, that is, 38,58,315 square meters of build-able area. The 2.5 FAR land of 381 acres, at Rs 8000 per square meter,(the prevailing rates) amounts to a valuation of Rs 3083 crore. Moreover Goa pays Rs 3.6 lakh per day to the developer in case of any delay in the project including in case of a court notice or stay.
By contrast compensation paid to the land losers is a mere Rs 54.79 per square meter. In fact when the UPA government had mooted the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Act, 2013, then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had declared that he would revisit the compensation paid to those who lost lands for the project and increase it according to prevailing market rates. This hasn’t quite happened as promised.
By contrast what has happened is that real estate valuation and around the project area has shot through the roof and some key politicians, sensing this growth picked up land when the rates were low. These early birds have made killing profits. The Mopa Vimantall Pidit Xetkar Samiti, a group of farmers protesting against the acquisition of land named three early bird politicians, cutting across party lines, who purchased land in the vicinity of the airport.
Therefore, for the government, for the Chief Minister or anyone handling the Mopa project to say that the government is incurring no costs is being very very economical with the truth. In less civilized environs, it’s called lying. It is a gift of more than Rs 3000 crores, which is almost like a matching grant to the developer, who will be one of the four shortlisted bidders GVK, GMR, Essel Infra Mumbai and Voluptas Developers. Essel Infra Mumbai and Voluptas Developers are tied up with foreign partners. All four companies will be required to provide a detailed proposal by 15 April 2016, which the state government will announce the successful bidder following the submission of their proposals.
Meanwhile why hasn’t the government calculated what it will spend on further land acquisition and construction, to build the approach roads and express highways for the project. A sum of Rs 1500 crores can easily be added under this component.
For the actual value of what the government has handed over to the chosen airport developer, it should have pitched even a 50% stake in the project, beyond the 26% it is entitled to. After all with the land component valued as the same as the construction and development costs, the Goa government cannot be a disinterested fringe player but a claimant of the project and be involved in major decision making so that some of the profits in the long run is ploughed back into the state in some form.
Therefore calling the Mopa project as a zero cost one is an
absolute travesty.
