Yogi govt to boost air links to spur Kumbh, Buddhist tourism

Will upgrade Chitrakoot airstrip, Allabahad airport; Lucknow to get Rs 1,200 facelift

 The Yogi Adityanath government is working towards ramping up air connectivity in Uttar Pradesh to boost tourism, including religious tourism, over the next two or three years.

 

The state has identified key centres to set up greenfield airports or upgrade the existing airstrips to handle scheduled and chartered air services. Some of these include Agra, Kanpur, Chakeri, Bareilly, Lalitpur, Jhansi, Faizabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Aligarh, Chitrakoot and Allahabad.

 

The state government has urged the union civil aviation ministry to expedite the proposal to upgrade the airstrip at Chitrakoot for fueling Buddhist Circuit tourism in the region, that covers parts of Nepal and Bihar as well, apart from surrounding Eastern UP districts.

 

Under the proposal, the existing airstrip is proposed to be expanded to 2,500 metres to handle international flights, especially originating from South-East Asian countries and Japan.

 

Yesterday, union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju had also called upon Yogi to discuss long pending issues related to the expansion of the airports network in the crucial state of UP.

 

In view of Ardh Kumbh 2019 in Allahabad, Yogi assured the union minister that his dispensation would identify and make available suitable land for the Allahabad airport by September 2017, so that the infrastructure is ready for use much before the Ardh Kumbh congregation, which ranks among the largest faith gatherings in the world.

 

Yogi noted UP was a big market for air traffic and there was a large untapped potential for religious tourism in the state.

 

Meanwhile, the state has identified 350 acres of land in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency of Varanasi for the up-gradation of the airstrip. Similarly, the Lucknow airport is proposed to be upgraded with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore to be incurred by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The Gorakhpur airport is also lined up for the up-gradation.

 

Raju said against the total aircraft inventory of 395 in India, fresh orders for over 900 planes had been placed over the last three years of the Modi regime, which indicated the projected growth in air traffic. He informed these planes would be made available in the next 3-4 years.

 

The Centre had recently given in principle approval to the proposed Jewar airport in Greater Noida, which would entail investment of about Rs 20,000 crore. It would serve as an international airport in the national capital region (NCR) to decongest the existing New Delhi airport in future.

 

The previous Akhilesh Yadav government also in favour of boosting air travel in the state by starting smaller aircraft between important cities. However, the scheme failed to take off.

 

Currently, there are over two dozen airports and airstrips in UP owned either by AAI or UP, located in Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Bareilly, Meerut, Saifai (Etawah), Sultanpur, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Farrukhabad, Faizabad, Kushinagar, Sonbhadra, Moradabad, Azamgarh etc. Besides, UP civil aviation department owns 18 airstrips of which the Jhansi airstrip is controlled by Indian Army.