Nagpur, Dec 18 (IANS): The decks have been cleared for starting work on the proposed Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) and it will be operational by 2019, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said here Thursday.

"All obstacles to the project have been overcome and we plan to make it (NMIA) functional by 2019," Fadnavis informed the Maharashtra Legislative Council here.

He was replying to a calling attention motion moved by senior Congress member Sanjay Dutt, asking the state government to make a statement on the current status of NMIA, coming up in Raigad district on the mainland.

Fadnavis said the greenfield airport - to be of world-class standards - is expected to cost around Rs.14,500 crore, in the public-private-partnership mode on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis.

The announcement follows the granting of environmental clearance for the project followed by the ministry of civil aviation approving the regulatory regime of 'Shared Till' for the new airport.

The double-runway NMIA is designed to ease congestion of the existing single-runway operations of Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

In preparations for the upcoming NMIA, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), which is overseeing the construction of the project, has already embarked on a Rs.20,000 crore infrastructure development of the nodes it manages in the airport vicinity.

These would include a Rs.2,100 crore Metro Rail, a Rs.1,400 crore Nerul-Uran railway connectivity, Rs.1,450 crore Balganga Dam for providing drinking water to Navi Mumbai, an airport township, coastal roads and bridges, besides the upcoming Mumbai Trans Harbour Link.