No Special Bench to be made on Mopa airport construction: SC

New Delhi:  The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused a Goa government plea seeking to constitute a special bench for urgently hearing the petition seeking the resumption of construction work for the Mopa international airport.

“We are not in a position to constitute a special bench now”, the bench said when Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the top court that the construction of the airport has been stalled for the last ten months.

Developed jointly by the Goa government and Hyderabad-based conglomerate GMR, the greenfield airport located in North Goa district is expected to handle 30 million passenger traffic when fully operational.

One of the counsel representing GMR told the court that the matter was partly heard by a bench headed by Justice D. Y. Chandrachud and now it needs to be concluded as early as possible. The bench asked him to approach the presiding judge with his grievances.

Justice Chandrachud was part of the five-judge Constitution bench which had heard the Ayodhya land dispute case for 40 days and reserved the judgement.

On account of the status quo order of the Supreme Court, the construction of Mopa Airport has been stalled.

The first phase of the airport was expected to be completed in 2020. However, the Supreme Court had stopped work on-site after a petition alleged that thousands of trees were being illegally cut at the airport site by the developers.