Poll drums ground Mopa?
This may have come as a bolt out of the blue to proponents and opponents of Mopa. Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar pulled a rabbit out of his hat at the review meeting of the new terminal building of Dabolim airport. He declared that his government never pushed for Mopa airport. If the chief minister really means what he said, it implies that a big question mark is hanging over Mopa. Goans for Dabolim, despite all their threats may have least expected that their campaign would be frozen, at least for the time being, with the chief minister cooling off on the issue.
It is true that it was not the BJP but the Congress which was the architect of the Mopa airport though leading lights from that party are now opposing it. Parrikar’s contention Thursday was that the Mopa greenfield airport will happen only if it is commercially viable. But isn’t this true about any public project? No one would dare put their foot in their mouth to push for a project which is commercially unviable. In fact the chief minister had earlier pushed for RFQ and only after that asked for an Environment Impact Assessment. Indeed he had announced that Mopa airport would be made functional by 2016/2017.
People would therefore be wondering how the dates were projected if the CM was unsure about the commercial viability of Mopa, and why he went ahead on the land acquisition, despite sustained protests from farmers.
Being commercially viable is not the only problem with Mopa. According to the Government of India’s Policy on Airport Infrastructure issued in December 1999, no greenfield airport will normally be allowed within a distance of 150 km from the nearest existing airport (in this case, Dabolim is well within that distance). Besides, Mopa was planned before Maharashtra thought of putting the Chipi airport at it southernmost tip. Now with Chipi airport projected to be ready by August 2014, give or take a few months, the fate of Mopa is likely to be sealed. More importantly, Chipi is just 130 km from Dabolim airport and just 62 kms from Mopa.
The large question looming over Mopa is whether the poll drums will finally kill the new project with Parrikar now finding it politically expedient to possibly ditch the controversial airport with his sights set on winning the two Goa Lok Sabha seats for the BJP in its attempt to wrest the Central government, since each seat will be crucial to the final tally. While the BJP is widely expected to do better than the Congress according to opinion polls, no BJP wave has been forecast.
From all indications, the chief minister’s unexpected declaration on Mopa could see the new airport project temporarily stalled, which only makes Dabolim’s case all the more favourable. Parrikar who had earlier said that Dabolim would be able to handle only four million passengers and would be doubly overloaded by 2017, has Thursday stated that the new facility would handle six million passengers if it works for 15 hours a day and nine million if it is operational for 24 hours. That’s not a bad projection. For this the chief minister has to get the Navy to vacate Dabolim and relocate its air base to Karwar. Going by the chief minister’s figures, Mopa should be redundant. And with Sharad Pawar too getting his Chipi airport, Mopa would become all the more unviable. But one should not let one’s guard down, given that the poll winds will soon blow past us and Mopa may come to haunt Goa again.
