The Navi Mumbai international airport (NMIA) will be ready by the middle of 2020, said Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday at the Global Aviation Summit being held in Mumbai.

Fadnavis, who had first announced the airport to be completed by 2019, said the airport development is on track and shall be operated by mid- next year. The comment comes at a time when 10% of the villagers displaced by the project are yet to vacate the area.

The chief minister said the NMIA would contribute one percent to the country’s GDP and is aimed to boost Indian aviation. He said, “Apart from NMIA, Pune and Nagpur airports are also being worked on and will offer huge connectivity.”

Speaking to the media later, the minister of commerce and industry and civil aviation Suresh Prabhu said their latest review of the airport project indicated that everything was going according to plan.

A statement issued by the City Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), the planning agency for Navi Mumbai, on Monday said that if the remaining 10% of villagers do not vacate the airport land till Tuesday, they would not be given compensation for land acquired for the project.

GVK, which runs Mumbai airport, was awarded letter of consent in October 2017 after which pre-development work had begun. However, this work, which includes the levelling of land, is yet to be completed.

In March 2018, Fadnavis had said that the NMIA will be inaugurated in 2019. However, when asked if it was possible to meet that deadline, aviation secretary RN Choubey, in September last year, had said that it will take another three years for the first flight to take off from the city’s second airport and that the ministry hopes its first flight will take off by September 2021.

First Published: Jan 16, 2019 01:07 IST