New airport at earlier decided Purandar site: Maharashtra deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis

PUNE: The state government on Tuesday confirmed that the proposed Pune airport would come up at the original site selected in 2016.
Replying to a text message from TOI on if a decision had been taken to build the already delayed greenfield airport at its original site, as decided in October 2016, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis wrote, “Yes”. He did not react to the question on a tentative date of starting the land acquisition process for the project.
Chief minister Eknath Shinde, along with Fadnavis and some senior bureaucrats, on Monday took stock of different flagship projects, including the Sambhaji Raje International Airport in Pune, in Mumbai.
Sudhir Mehta, the president of the Marhatta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), said the state government should now start with the land acquisition and construction of the new airport.
“We welcome the decision and hope that the actual airport construction will begin now. Pune cannot do with just one airport now. The civil aviation minister would be coming to Pune on September 2. We shall discuss with him this issue as well as other topics related to the existing Lohegon airport,” Mehta said.
Datta Dhurange, the president of Vimantal Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti, formed by the landowners of seven villages — Pargaon, Udachiwadi, Munjwadi, Ekhatpur, Khanwadi, Vanpuri and Kumbharwan — said everything boiled down to the availability of land. “We are still active and on protest. If land cannot be acquired, how can the airport come up? No one will give up their land for the project in all the villages,” he said.
Fadnavis, then CM of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance government, had announced in October 2016 that the new Pune airport would be named after Sambhaji Raje and come up on 2,400 hectares at Purandar taluka, some 45km away from Pune. The projected deadline for the two-runway project, to be managed by the Maharashtra Airport Development Company Limited (MADC), was 2019 then.
The ministry of defence and the civil aviation ministry had cleared the project, but Pune district administration could not initiate land acquisition as landowners protested in seven villages.