Chennai ,November 17(BPNS )
Madurai district police have deployed a heavy police posse at Chinna Udaippa village in Madurai where the local people are protesting against the Madurai airport expansion project.
More than one thousand police personnel are deployed in the area for maintaining law and order situation in the area.
Protestors are seeking three cents of land and a house in exchange for their land to be taken away for Madurai airport expansion project.
It may be noted that officials will be reaching in Chinna Udaippa village for land acquisition programme.
It may be noted that Madurai airport, located on 502.25 acres, is acquiring 633.17 additional acres. “543.64 acres have already been handed over for further expansion.”
Madurai Collector M.S. Sangeetha has given administrative sanction for land acquisition to lay a road alternative to the one that is holding up the construction of a compound wall around the acquired land.
The airport has built a compound wall to a length of 12.36 km in the newly acquired land. It may be recalled that though the Madurai airport got a new terminal building in 2010 and international flights are being operated to Singapore, Dubai, and Colombo, the airport is yet to get international status.
The airport handled 14 lakh passengers during 2023-24 and the 24×7 operation became a reality on October 1, 2024.
AAI Chairman M. Suresh says the number of flights taking off from the Madurai airport would increase manifold in the next six months.
Virudhunagar MP B. Manickam Tagore told BPNS that it may take more time for the airport to get international status, but it will have more domestic flights.
Manickam Tagore said ,”We expect flights to connect Madurai with Varanasi and Pune very soon,” Madurai already has air connectivity to Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and New Delhi.
The airport has reconfigured the terminal building to handle the increasing number of passengers. According to senior officials of the Madurai airport these measures will help in swift clearance of passengers and reducing their waiting time in queu.
Officials said that while presently the terminal building and the runway are good enough to handle the present traffic of the airport ,the passenger- handling capacity of the airport will get saturated as more services come to Madurai.
Airport officials told BPNS that the expansion of the airport is the only solution to overcome this saturation and hence land acquisition is necessary.