Press Trust of India
March 8 : The Government today appealed to Chief Ministers to join hands with it and share costs for modernisation and upgradation of airports across the country.
"I appeal to the Chief Ministers to come forward and help the Government in its programme of modernisation and upgradation of airports," Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told Lok Sabha during Question Hour.
He said the Chief Ministers could help in augmenting Centre's efforts by sharing costs in the exercise of airport modernisation.
Patel was replying to a volley of questions from members with regard to various projects for modernisation and upgradation of airports.
The airports which have been taken up for modernisation and upgradation are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Amritsar, Dehradun, Jaipur, Khajurao, Kullu, Lucknow, Pantnagar, Srinagar, Udaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Gaya, Agartala, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, Silchar, Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Belgaum, Gondia, Nagpur, Pune, Raipur, Vadodara, Surat, Agatti, Calicut, Hubli, Mangalore, Madurai, Mysore, Tirupathi, Trichy and Visakhapatnam.
In addition, new greenfield airports were coming up at Hyderabad and Bangalore, Patel said.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI), he said, had spent Rs 566.22 crore, Rs 606.49 crore and Rs 876.08 crore for airport modernisation and upgradation in each of the last three years respectively.
On the progress of airport projects in Madhya Pradesh, the Minister said works at airports in Bhopal and Indore, the busiest in the state, had not been up to the mark for various reasons and effort were on to expedite them. The projects were at various stages in Jabalpur, Gwalior and Khajurao, he said.
While the new runway at Visakhapatnam airport would be opened for commercial use in a few months, the Minister said he would take up with the Defence Ministry the issue of upgrading West Bengal's Bagdogra airport to an international airport as it could link flights to Nepal and Bhutan besides North-Eastern states and Bihar.
Patel said work on the Calicut airport would be completed well before the end of this year while "priority" was being accorded to modernisation of Kolkata airport where the project was expected to be ready in a few months.