The West Bengal government has restricted property transactions across nine mouzas in Nadia to facilitate land acquisition for the proposed Kalyani greenfield airport, a 2,000-acre project intended to ease congestion at Kolkata airport and expand air connectivity in the region.
Acting on the direction of state chief secretary Manoj Pant, the Directorate of Registration and Stamp Revenue has instructed registration officers not to register any document involving properties in Birpara, Char Jadubati, Ganga Mohanpur, Char Madhusuanpur, Sarati, Murutipur, Umapur, Iswaripur and Kalyani.
The restriction means that property-related documents in the identified mouzas cannot currently be registered through the state system. The measure is intended to prevent transactions from complicating the government’s effort to assemble the land required for the airport project.
The Kalyani greenfield airport was announced in the 2026 state budget as a response to capacity constraints at Kolkata airport. In a communication to the land and land reforms department’s principal secretary in June, Pant said there was no scope to expand the existing airport in Kolkata. He compared the proposed project with the Noida International Airport at Jewar and Navi Mumbai International Airport, both planned as additional aviation hubs for metropolitan regions.
The proposed airport will require around 2,000 acres. The runway and its clearances alone are expected to require a land parcel about 5 km long and 500 metres wide. The wider airport site will also need taxiways, parking bays, passenger and cargo terminals, an air traffic control tower and other supporting facilities.
The state currently has around 240 acres for the project, including a government-owned brick field spread across 172 acres. The remaining land will have to be acquired. According to the report, the largest land requirement is expected in Kalyani and Birpara, followed by Sarati, Murutipur and Umarpur. The source uses both Umapur and Umarpur in its account; the registration notification lists Umapur among the nine affected mouzas.
Sources cited in the report said the airport is being planned with two parallel runways oriented in a northeast-southwest direction. The passenger and cargo terminals, along with the air traffic control tower, are proposed to be located to the east of the runways.
The land restriction marks a shift from announcing the airport to preparing the administrative framework for assembling its site. However, the notification does not establish a construction schedule, acquisition completion date or operational timeline for the airport. The immediate next step is the government’s land acquisition process for the portion of the proposed site that it does not already own.
