Name Navi Mumbai airport after D B Patil or face protests, warns NCP (SP) leader

Thane, Oct 1 (PTI) NCP (SP) MP Suresh Mhatre on Wednesday warned of taking out a protest march if the soon-to-be-inaugurated Navi Mumbai International Airport is not named after local leader and former parliamentarian late D B Patil.

Mhatre, who represents the Bhiwandi Lok Sabha constituency in Thane district, made the demand in the wake of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) granting an aerodrome licence to the airport.

PM Modi is scheduled to inaugurate the new airport on October 6.

Addressing a press conference, Mhatre said if the airport is not named after D B Patil, then a massive protest march would be taken out on October 6.

The protesters would march from Karave village in Navi Mumbai directly to the new airport.

"We will ensure that the airport will not be allowed to operate," the leader of the Sharad Pawar-led party said.

If permission is not granted to the protest, then the order will be defied as taking out the march was a "democratic right", he said.

"The demand to name the Navi Mumbai airport after D B Patil has been there since 2008 when the idea of the airport was mooted," he said.

Recently, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state government sent a proposal to the Union government to name the airport after Patil, and also expressed confidence that the Centre has a positive view of the proposal and that the process was underway.

Mhatre asked that since the Maharashtra government had suggested only Patil's name for the airport, what was stopping the Centre from accepting the suggestion.

He expressed confidence that just as CM Fadnavis resolved the Maratha reservation issue, he can bring a positive solution as far as naming the airport was concerned. PTI COR NP