BIAL choked?

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit ...

Went to BIAL website just now and ran into that bandwidth error. The interest in BIAL is definitely increasing :) However, leaving this irrelevant internet snafu apart, and talking about choking, I picked this interesting snippet from TOI yesterday. Congress MLAs were at it accusing government of lacking vision on infrastructure front when one of them quoted some interesting statistics about the new airport:

Condemning the government’s “lack of vision’’ in infrastructure projects, C Krishna Byre Gowda (Cong) told the legislative assembly on Wednesday that the international airport is a typical example. “The present HAL airport itself handled 8.1 million passengers in 2006-07. The rate of growth is 44%. At the same pace, the new airport will have to handle 12 million passengers by April 2008, when it opens. Shouldn’t we plan for a future 20-30 years, when we set up infrastructure projects? Why are we so short-sighted?’’ he asked.

44%, is that the growth rate for air passenger traffic at Bangalore? Seems a bit high to me. What were the growth numbers BIAL worked with? Can't check right now as their site is down, but they definitely have a plan to commence on next phase (capacity improvement) right after they open in April.

If the MLAs manage to sell choking as a valid concern along with connectivity, there is no way HAL airport is going to go away next year!