Fresh bid for Aranmula airport

Thiruvananthapuram: The KGS Group is learnt to have submitted a fresh application with the centre for the Aranamula airport project . According to sources, the application is now pending with the Ministry of Environment and Forest, and the ministry is scheduled to discuss it on July 29. Even as sources close to KGS Group confirmed the reports, those who were earlier associated with the project admitted that it would be technically difficult to get the project approved at the same spot.

Hence the KGS Group may try to identify a new spot. Meanwhile, sources also said that the state government was yet to withdraw the notification redesignating the wet land as industrial area. Though Agriculture Minister V.S. Sunil Kumar had recently stated that cultivation will be reinitiated in the spot identified for the airport, any visible steps on these lines were yet to be made.

It may be  recalled that BJP state president Kummanam Rajasekharan had led the stir against the airport project. The initial permission  for the project was given during the last days of the previous LDF government. The civil aviation ministry cancelled the approval for the Rs 2000-crore airport project in May last after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) cancelled  the environment clearance granted to the project.