Eleven years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport in Mohali on November 11, 2015 — leaving commuters from Chandigarh and Panchkula scrambling for a longer, circuitous route ever since the old domestic airport on the IAF base closed — Haryana is set to finally deliver a new, shorter road link to the airport, with Chief Minister (CM) Nayab Singh Saini giving his nod to the project. The only hurdle now: a green light from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), New Delhi.According to official documents accessed exclusively by The Tribune, Saini has approved a proposal to build a 100-feet wide road from the Chandigarh entry point, running along the periphery of Defence land and the vacant portion of the Chandigarh International Airport Limited (CHIAL) estate, right up to the new terminal building.The road will require 38 acres of defence land, and Haryana has agreed to bear the entire cost — including land acquisition, construction, Air Force boundary wall, security systems and a 450-metre underpass mandated by the Indian Air Force near the Instrument Landing System (ILS) and CAT-II lights along Runway 29’s approach path.Punjab refuses to share costIn a notable setback to a tri-state solution, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has flatly refused to share the cost.“We are going through great economic stress and, therefore, are not able to participate in any project,” CM Mann stated during a high-level inter-state discussion, according to the official record. CM Mann’s position: since residents of Punjab access the airport from the Mohali side, the new route is of no benefit to them.Haryana CM countered that the alternate road would also reduce distances for people travelling from Mohali, Zirakpur, and the Kalka-Shimla Highway corridor, but Punjab held its ground.What the new route meansThe significance of the alternate road cannot be overstated. When the new international airport — built as a joint venture between the Airports Authority of India (AAI), Punjab, and Haryana — became operational, the old domestic terminal on the IAF base, which had a convenient entry from the Chandigarh side, was shut down. This left commuters from Panchkula, eastern Chandigarh sectors, Zirakpur, and beyond with no direct, short access to the new terminal. They were forced to take a longer loop through Mohali’s road network to reach the airport.As per technical feasibility data cited in official communications, the new route will cut distances sharply: travel from Zirakpur will drop from 13.7 km to 9.6 km, from Mohali from 16 km to 13.1 km, and from the Kalka-Shimla Highway from 11.7 km to 9.6 km.How the plan took shapeThe project has a long and winding bureaucratic history. It was first raised at the 29th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council on September 20, 2019, under the chairmanship of the Union Home Minister Amit Shah at Chandigarh, where a DMRC-prepared Technical Feasibility Report pegged the cost at Rs 1,357 crore. That figure was widely seen as prohibitive, and the item was dropped after consensus eluded all stakeholders.The issue was revived after a meeting chaired by the Chief Principal Secretary to the Haryana Chief Minister in Chandigarh recently. The meeting, called by Chandigarh Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav, was attended by Haryana’s Principal Secretary (Civil Aviation) Amneet P Kumar, Civil Aviation Advisor Anshaj Singh, a representative of the Ministry of Defence, and Group Captain Chandel of the IAF’s Chandigarh Airport. Three alternative routes were placed on the table; after detailed deliberation, the route skirting the defence land periphery and CHIAL’s vacant land up to the new terminal was unanimously identified as the most feasible.MoD’s termsDefence Estate Officer Vishwas Sohal, who was visited by a Haryana civil aviation team at his office in Chandigarh, recently outlined the procedural requirements. Haryana must upload a formal application with a request letter, undertakings, sketch maps, and a government recommendation on the MoD portal. The MoD offers three modes for land transfer — cash payment, land exchange, or equivalent infrastructure. Since the land involved falls under Chandigarh and Punjab jurisdictions and Haryana holds no adjacent land to offer in exchange, Haryana will proceed on a cash payment basis, to be routed through HSVP as per established practice.An office order has already been issued directing the upload of the proposal on the MoD portal. The required application forms and annexures have since been prepared and are awaiting approval of the Haryana Civil Aviation Minister before being formally filed with New Delhi.