The Cabinet Committee on Economic
Affairs has approved a one-time grant-in-aid of Rs. 378 crores
from the Government Budgetary Support for implementation of GPS Aided
GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) project over Indian airspace for seamless
navigation, subject to conditions imposed
by the EFC.
The total project cost approved by CCEA is
Rs.774 crore, out of which Rs.148 crore has been spent in TDS Phase (AAI
contribution Rs.108 crore and Rs.40 crore contributed by ISRO). The balance amount of Rs.626 crore has been earmarked for FOP out of which AAI is
required to contribute Rs.496 crore and balance
Rs.130 crore is to be contributed by ISRO. Out of its total
commitment of Rs.604 crore to this project, AAI has already spent Rs.226 crore and is now seeking a one-time grant-in-aid
from the GBS of Rs.378 crore to meet its balance
commitment. This has been recommended by the EFC. GBS is to be provided in the
current year for a sum of Rs. 171crores. For the next year appropriate
provisions would be made for the balance amount.
The project is expected to be ready for operational use by May, 2013.
The project has multiple benefits to the
aviation sector and would help in seamless navigation over Indian airspace. It
would be an all weather national infrastructure
and can be used by defence services, security
agencies, Railways, surface transport, shipping, telecom industry and personal
users of position location based services.
Almost all the fields related to public and
country benefits like defence services, security agencies,
railways, air transport, surface transport, shipping, telecom industry and
personal users of position location, based services will get benefits by the GAGAN project.
Background - In view of the limitations of the
ground based navigation systems, the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 1993 endorsed a global
satellite based navigation system as the future of air navigation
system. In furtherance of this international commitment, AAI and Indian Space
Research Organization (ISRO) entered into a MoU on
25.8.2001 for implementation of GAGAN Project for seamless navigation over
Indian air space. Presently, similar systems are in operation in USA, European
countries etc. It is being ensured that GAGAN system is interoperable with
other similar systems operational in the world and if.;
fit to provide CAT-I precision approach in
the land mass of the India's Flight Information Region (FIR).
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SH/SK/SM