Adilabad airport grows; maps don’t
Anukunta villagers marched to the Collectorate over airport land and a road they fear will vanish. The state has since sanctioned 2,009 acres and road diversions — but has yet to show the exact map to the people living on it.
The airport expansion has been sanctioned; the final public map remains pending.
Residents of Anukunta marched to the Adilabad Collectorate on 5 August, demanding clarity on how much of their land the proposed Adilabad “joint user” airport will take — and whether their 2‑km road to town is about to become a 16‑km detour. Those numbers are the protesters’ claims, not an official plan on paper. (NT News)
What is on paper now is big: the state has accorded administrative sanction of Rs 2,278.14 crore to acquire 2,009 acres and shift utilities, including diverting existing Roads & Buildings roads, by 31 December 2026. Of this, 1,609.23 acres are for the Indian Air Force and 400 acres for the civil enclave, MRO, cargo and hangars, with the runway scaled to support an Airbus A321. (Telangana Today)
This is an escalation from an earlier 700‑acre authorisation recorded in 2025 and the shifting acreage figures that sparked confusion and protests through early 2026. In February, the Collector told villagers the circulating master plan was a draft and would be changed so villages did not fall inside it. Whether the August protest saw a revised alignment or the same draft remains unstated in public. (New Indian Express; V6 Velugu; Telangana Today)
The protesters’ list runs from “no surveys without notices” and jobs for locals to a compensation demand of Rs 6 crore per acre — a demand, not a declared rate. The specific 871‑acre hit to Anukunta and the road’s final alignment are still unverified without the survey numbers, acquisition notifications or the approved map. (NT News)
Here is the part that should not be hard: publish the acquisition map, the survey numbers affected and the replacement road’s alignment, in Telugu and online, before a bulldozer or a theodolite shows up. Telangana needs the runway; Anukunta needs to know where it will land.