The panic calls have started. Passengers who booked air tickets through Mumbai airport in next few months; international inbound/outbound to domestic connections and vice a versa. Which airport will their flight land in or take off from ? More importantly, they earlier accounted for a 3-4 hour layover at Mumbai CST airport. It is physically impossible to make it from or to the Navi Mumbai airport in this time frame. There is no indication that tickets being issued today account for the changeover either.

A deep dive into the contentious Mumbai airport T1 rebuild project via @zinaldedhia04 A review of regulatory filings and statements by the airport operator shows that the scope and execution of the project have changed significantly — from rebuilding T1B, to a proposal to demolish the entire T1 complex, and now to a phased redevelopment beginning with only a section of T1B. The earliest evidence dates to August 2017, when a structural audit of T1B was conducted. By the 2019-20 regulatory planning period, MIAL had proposed about Rs 1,205 crore for reconstructing T1B, with AERA records explicitly stating that the existing terminal would be demolished and rebuilt. thecore.in/n-871996

Mumbai T2 was a new terminal built 12 years ago atop and alongside an existing, fully operational terminal with a seamless, overnight handover from a dump to a 4-storey engineering and architectural marvel. Surely T1 can also build over with far less engineering complexity it would appear instead of making passengers suffer for all-round administrative laxity, failure of co-ordination and minimal if any foresight.

London Falling, the bestselling true-crime book by Patrick Radden Keefe has an interesting side-story. In it, a London-based, Ugandan-Indian businessman Akbar Shamji claims to have been felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 for being "One of only eight recipients of a prestigious `Re-Invest Award' He circulates a picture liberally in which it looks like he is accepting that award. The New Yorker - where Keefe works - fact checks this and establishes that in the photograph in question, it is actually Shamji alongwith 27 private companies giving Modi a `Green Energy Commitment Certificate' and not Modi giving him an award ! Keefe says they even tracked down a video which showed Akbar shaking hands with Modi, giving his commitment certificate and walking away empty handed ! Interestingly, online, you will still find both versions of this photograph.