Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday inaugurated the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), describing it as a “glimpse of Viksit Bharat”, or developed India, that will help make the Mumbai region Asia’s biggest connectivity hub.The first phase of NMIA, also the country’s largest greenfield airport, has been built at a cost of Rs 19,650 crore and is set to be operational in December Earlier, the aircraft carrying Modi landed at the new airport, the second one in the Mumbai region, at around 2.40 pm.
Spread across 1,160 hectares, the airport will have one terminal and one runway in the first phase with an annual passenger handling capacity of 20 million.
The entire project is being developed in multiple phases by Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL), a company in which the Adani Group has a 74 per cent stake with the remaining 26 per cent held by the Maharashtra government’s town planning and development agency CIDCO.
“The long wait of Mumbai is over as the city has now got its second airport, which will also help Maharashtra’s farmers get connected with supermarkets in Europe and the Middle-east,” Modi said after inaugurating the aviation project which has been in the making for years and faced numerous delays.
The airport will play a significant role in making the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) Asia’s biggest connectivity hub, the PM declared.
Significantly, the ground-breaking ceremony for the massive aviation project was performed by Modi in 2018.