Bids invited for greenfield airport in Bellary

Bangalore: The Infrastructure Development Department of Karnataka has invited bids for building a greenfield airport in Bellary in the north.

About 1000 acres of land have been identified some 12 km north-east of the city on the Sanganakallu-Moka road, with access to State highway 132, the document put out by the IDD on Wednesday said.

The greenfield airport has been planned as the Airports Authority cannot take up expansion of the old airstrip at the city, according to IDD.

Bellary, in the heart of steel, iron ore mining and heritage belt, will be the fifth non-metro airport project being planned in public-private partnership.

An IDD official did not say how much investment the project would warrant. In comparison, the relatively smaller airports at Shimoga and Gulbarga, each to come up on 650 acres of land, are attracting an initial air side investment of Rs 50 crore each, and their promoters have earlier said this would be doubled subsequently. The Hassan project has been earmarked 2,500 acres of land.

Asked if investors would respond amidst the economic downturn, the official said the project had much potential and should fetch a good response. The request for proposal document will be issued from January 14, 2009, and the bids would close on March 16.

Of the other four projects, Gulbarga and Shimoga have been awarded to Maytas Infra-NCC-Vienna Airport consortium; Bijapur to the Chennai-based MARG recently; and Hassan to Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar’s Jupiter Aviation.

A major district road up to NH63 will be developed as an alternative route. Bellary is some 70 km or two hours by road to the ruins at Hampi, a world heritage site and seat of the 15th-century Vijayanagar empire. Sanganakallu is home to Neolithic ruins. The region attracts one million tourists every year, half of them international travellers, according to the IDD document.