DIAL officials were called in for a meeting with the Commission’s deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, today. Calling it a “complete failure”, the Commission said the situation at the airport was “miserable” - instead of decreasing congestion, DIAL, which is upgrading the airport, had only increased congestion. Commission officials said this was leading to a perception that bringing in a private partner for the upgrade work amounted to little on the ground.

DIAL assured that the airport would be less of a nightmare by June. However, DIAL also complained that part of the problem was delay on part of the government in providing more staff for security and immigration check.

In response, Ahluwalia said the government would look at the issue of increasing security staff and immigration staff to ease things.

DIAL has been demanding 1,500 CISF personnel and another 150 personnel to handle immigration counters for the last six months or so. The government is yet to meet this request.

“They (DIAL officials) informed us about steps being taken to ease congestion,” Ahluwalia said. “By June-end, there should be significant improvement; in the next six months, more steps will be taken. So, before winter this year, the problem of congestion is likely to end.”

The DIAL team was led by its managing director, Kiran Kumar Grandhi, at the meeting. DIAL officials said in the meeting that upgrading an existing airport was different from a greenfield one, and that they required help in security and immigration areas to decrease waiting time for passengers.

Grandhi said DIAL would commission the third runway by August — six months ahead of schedule — and build a new domestic terminal by November, and upgrade the international terminal by July. The new Terminal-3, which would be an integrated terminal with a handling capacity of 34 million passengers, would come up only by 2010, Grandhi said.