The Tamil Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) has extended up to June the deadline for consultants to submit their bids for assisting the state agency in building the proposed second airport in Chennai.
In an advertisement seeking consultants recently, TIDCO had said the order was for a “Techno-Economic Feasibility study for the project, identification of sites for development of new Greenfield airport near Chennai, and for preparing a Detailed Project Report,” besides assisting TIDCO in obtaining statutory clearances and selection of a developer for the project.
Originally determined to close by April 1, the last date has been extended to June now, said an officer with TIDCO in-charge of the administrative process relating to the bidding. “For internal reasons, we have decided to extend the date. It is quite usual even for small tenders. This is a large project, so an extension is not unusual,” the officer said.
Already, the idea of a second airport has caught the interests of infrastructure developers. According to the Request for Proposal document put out by TIDCO in February this year, Chennai is the fourth busiest airport in the country, making a second airport a strong business case for the southern metropolis.
Tamil Nadu boasts four international airports – Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy and Madurai, and two domestic airports in Salem and Thoothukudi. The Chennai airport handled 20.36 million passengers in 2017-18, according to the RFP document from TIDCO. It constituted 6.7% share in India’s total aircraft movement in 2017-18. It recorded a 16.3% growth in terms of freight handling in 2017-18.
The second airport project near Chennai has been under discussions since February 2012, when former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa envisaged a Rs 20,000-crore second unit off Chennai that can handle an annual capacity of 40 million passengers.
