Mumbai: When IAS officer Vijay Singhal took charge as the managing director of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) in February 2024, the first thing he did was visit the site of the under-construction Navi Mumbai airport.

It did not seem that the airport, which by then had been on a 27-year-long journey, was anywhere close to completion. Only half of the terminal had a runway; the other half was still covered by a hill waiting to be cleared, Singhal told reporters in an interaction on Sunday.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first phase of the Navi Mumbai airport , thereby bringing a long, arduous, and politically and environmentally challenging project to some level of fruition. With this, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region—the urban agg

See Full Page