RENAMING AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW AIRPORTS

A proposal has been received by the central government with regard to renaming thirteen airports in the country and the cabinet has to make the decision in this regard. The airports mentioned in the proposal include one in Aurangabad. The Union Minister Dr Bhagwat Karad said that a proposal was sent to the centre to rename the Aurangabad airport after Chhatrapati Sambhaji –

the Maratha king. Dr Karad also stated that he has been looking over the issue regularly. When Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray was speaking at a virtual ceremony of an establishment in Aurangabad, he too stated that the legislators that go to the national capital must take up the issue of renaming airports and have this done.

Recently, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, the Minister of Civil Aviation, gave a written reply to a question in the Parliament stating that the government had approved ‘inprinciple’ to set up a total of 21 Greenfield Airports. These include Mopa in Goa, Shirdi, Sindhudurg, Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra, Kalaburagi, Hassan, Bijapur, Shimoga in Karnataka, Datia (Gwalior) in MP, Noida and Khushinagar in UP, Hirasar and Dholera in Gujrat, Karaikal in Puducherry, Bhogapuram, Dagadarthi and Oravakal in Andhra Pradesh, Pakyong in Sikkim, Durgapur in West Bengal, Kannur in Kerala and Hollongi (Itanagar) in Arunachal Pradesh. The airports have approval at Navi Mumbai, Mopa, Shirdi, Noida ( Jewar), Hirasar, Dholera, Kannur, Bhogapuram and Khushinagar and are international airports. The rest are domestic

airports. Out of the twenty-one airports, eight of them have already been operationalised. These eight airports are – Pakyong, Durgapur, Sindhudurg, Shirdi, Kannur, Ovarakal, Kalaburagi and Khushinagar.