The domestic terminal of the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad will be named after the late N T Rama Rao, the founder of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday said the Union civil aviation ministry had passed orders to this effect. Before the setting up of the new airport at Shamshabad by the GMR group, the domestic terminal of the old Begumpet airport was named after Rao. The new project was initiated before 2004, when the TDP was in power. The party lost to the Congress in 2004 and former chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy did not name it after Rao when its operations were launched in March 2008.
The TDP protested at that time and vowed to retain the name of NTR for the domestic terminal once it came back to power in the state. TDP's Ashok Gajapati Raju being the Union civil aviation minister made things easy.
It remains to be seen how the chief minister of the new state of Telangana, K Chandrasekhar Rao, who wants to erase the names of the people belonging to Andhra on institutions located in Telangana, will react to this decision.
