Coimbatore: Around 40 landowners, whose lands have been leased by the Airports Authority of India, marched to the city airport demanding pending lease payments for about five years on Tuesday. At airport, the landowners demanded to meet with the director, but after a couple of hours of parleys, police have arrived and asked the landowners to approach revenue divisional officers and the district collectorate on the issue.Out of 627 acres marked for acquisition for the expansion of the airport, 60.95 acres, spread across Kalapatti and Singanallur, was leased to the airport. AAI had been paying lease for the land up to 2013 for some owners and up to 2014 for a few others, said one of the owners. “However, for the past five years, AAI has not made lease payments and are not willing to clear the arrears,” Sundarasamy, a landowner, said. “They said the land has been marked for acquisition and once it is, the landowners will not receive lease payments. But the acquisition has not yet started. We want at least the acquisition process to be completed and payments to be made,” he added.The airport authorities reportedly referred the landowners to the land management department in the airport. “An airport representative informed us that AAI was still discussing whether to make payments as the issue was in court. But only 18 landowners had gone to court, why the rest of us are denied our lease amounts,” Kannan, another owner asked.One of the landowners said, “The number of owners of the 60.95 acres has grown to at least 400 as family members had divided lands over the past seven decades. Many women and senior citizens are depending on this income. We do not have the resources to file cases and approach officials daily on the issue.”The owners were in the airport for nearly two hours and refused to vacate till police arrived. “Police have asked us to submit petitions at the district collectorate on grievance day,” Sundarasamy said.

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