High Court hearing: Chandigarh proposes two alternative routes to airport, to cut distance by around 3km

The status report before the High Court was submitted by the Chandigarh Administration through an affidavit of DK Aggarwal, superintending engineer, construction circle, Chandigarh.

Apart from this, the HC was also told through an affidavit filed by the Central Government/Indian Air Force that the issue regarding the installation of instrument landing system “CAT III B” at the airport had been “rested” and the issue stood closed.

The division bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli have been hearing a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) filed by Mohali Industries Association in 2015 on making Chandigarh International Airport fully functional by removing all infrastructure deficiencies.

As per the affidavit of the section engineer of Chandigarh, on April 22, a meeting was chaired by the UT Adviser with all senior officials of the administration as well as the CEO of Chandigarh International Airport , the consultant and the assistant divisional engineer of Chandigarh division of Northern Railways. In the meeting, the report of the consultant was examined and it was decided that two out of the three proposals submitted by the consultant can be finalised.

As per Senior Standing Counsel of Chandigarh, Anil Mehta, the present distance between Chandigarh and Chandigarh International Airport is around 11 kilometres. As per the proposals submitted, one alternative route will shorten the distance by 2.85 kilometres, while the other alternative route will cut down the distance by 3.32 kilometres.
The affidavit further read that in order to proceed with the alternative routes, clearance and participation would be needed from the Airports Authority of India, Defence authorities and Punjab government, as some land on which the proposed road was to be built came under Punjab.

An UT official said that a survey has been done, and a joint meeting will be held between the officials of Chandigarh, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Defence, and officials of Haryana and Punjab soon.

Meanwhile, through another affidavit submitted by the IAF, the HC was also told that the requisite working permission for the timely construction of Southern Taxi Track (STT) had been accorded by the IAF. “The construction work had been completed by the Airport Authority of India (AAI) and the STT had been declared operational with effect from April 11,” the affidavit said.

The second affidavit further mentioned, “Various works related to resurfacing/ extension of runway length and construction of new ATC tower has been completed. The airfield was declared 24×7 operational from April 10, 2019. All the civil flights propose by the DGCA during summer/ winter schedule were being accommodated without any hindrance and the traffic services are being provided round the clock by Chandigarh ATC.”