On Thursday, the Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Gen VK Singh, said the central government had approved “in principle” the establishment of 21 greenfield airports across the country.

According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Singh said in his written reply to Lok Sabha that the airports include Goa’s Mopa, Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai, Shirdi and Sindhudurg, Karnataka’s Kalaburgi, Vijayapura, Hassan and Shivamoga, Madhya Pradesh’s Dabra (Gwalior) Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar and Noida (Jewar), Gujarat’s Dholera and Hirasar, Karaikal in Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh’s Dagadarthi, Bhogapuram and Oravakal (Kurnool), West Bengal’s Durgapur, Sikkim’s Pakyong, Kerala’s Kannur and Donyi Polo, Arunachal Pradesh’s Itanagar.

Nine new greenfield airports in Durgapur, Shirdi, Kannur, Pakyong, Kalaburgi, Oravakal (Kurnool), Sindhudurg, Kushinagar and Donyi Polo, Itanagar is already in operation.

The government has given “in-principle” approval to the Gujarat government to develop two greenfield airports at Rajkot’s Hirasar and Ahmedabad’s Dholera.

The state government has teamed up with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to develop the Hirasar airport at Rs 1,405 crore.

For the development of the Dholera Greenfield Airport at a project cost of Rs 1,305 crore, a joint venture between AAI, the Government of Gujarat (GoG) and the National Industrial Corridors Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) with a 51:33:16 stake respectively was set up to oversee its implementation.

The development of greenfield airports is governed by the Greenfield Airports (GFA) Policy 2008.

Under the policy, state governments or airport developers interested in building an airport must submit a proposal to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) for two-stage approval, ‘site clearance’ and ‘in-principle’ approval. MoCA considers such proposals as per the procedure laid down in the GFA Policy.

Responsibility for implementing an airport project, including funding, rests with the relevant airport developer, including the respective state government (if the state government is the project sponsor).