It’s the good old bad new airport in Bangalore all over again. What was to have been the Bangalorean’s longstanding dream come true is today his worst nightmare. Miles away from the city, with improper transportation, and no mass transportation system, the Devanahalli airport is the worst place to be in. On top of it, the passenger is stiffed with a user fee. Over the two years that it has been open, we have heard a number of other complaints, notably about how it has just one runway and how it was never really built for the future, as we were promised.

Now, we can set to rest all the rumours and believe the worst. An august panel of the Karnataka Assembly panel has concluded that the international airport is far from world-class. In fact, it is “substandard” and a mere “industrial shed” that suffered from "faulty" design and "poor quality of workmanship."

While one could appreciate the observations as candid confessions, even if slightly late, what is disturbing is the fact that the panel points the finger at private players involved in the building of the airport, and some eminent citizens, for apparently harmless things.

If you read between the lines, there is one major issue on which the lawmakers are peeved – Larsen and Toubro and Unique Zurich Airport sold part of their stakes to GVK Power and Infrastructure Limited for huge profits, apparently earning 10 times their original investment. That the sale apparently didn’t violate the agreement with the government appears to have made no impression on the panel, which wants the firms to be barred from government contracts for five years.

The panel has even hauled eminent leaders such as Infosys chief N.R. Narayana Murthy and businessman-turned-MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, seeking “appropriate action” against the two. But our daily, The New Indian Express, said the panel chief Hemachandra Sagar had given Murthy a clean chit.

 “Bigwigs like Narayana Murthy were involved only in coordinating for getting the greenfield airport sanctioned. They were not involved in any manner afterwards,” Sagar told our reporter. However, Sagar refused to say if ‘appropriate action’ would be initiated against Murthy and Chandrashekhar, besides the central and state government officials who were part of the board meetings of BIAL, our report said.

The other thing that appears to have anguished the panel is the design of the airport. It apparently does not reflect the state’s tradition or culture, prompting me to pop the question: What was the Karnataka government, an equal partner in the venture, doing while it was being built all these years?