A long-pending dream of the state government is taking its final shape as the Biju Patnaik airport will get the International status very soon. The Centre has decided to develop the International airport in Bhubaneswar. Also three more low-cost airports will be set up in Odisha’s Berhampur, Rourkela and Keonjhar.
The decision was taken at a high level meeting on Friday presided by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and attended by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Ministers of Power, Coal, Railways, Roads, Shipping and Civil Aviation to finalise infrastructure projects for 2013-14.
The Centre decided to set up 51 new low-cost airports in the country including three in Odisha. The state-owned airport operator, Airports Authority of India (AAI), would set up the airports in Tier-II and Tier-II cities in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
The low-cost airports will be set up at Vijayawada, Nellore, Kurnool, Kadapa, Nizamabad, Tirupati, Anantapur and Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh; Dhanbad, Bokaro and Hazaribagh in Jharkhand; Muzaffarpur, Chapra and Sasaram in Bihar; Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Firozpur in Punjab; Agra, Allahabad, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Meerut, Aligarh, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar and Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh; Tezu, Bomdila and Along in Arunachal Pradesh; Silchar, Jorhat and Tezpur in Assam; Gwalior, Singrauli, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Jabalpur, Sidhi and Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh; Berhampur, Rourkela and Keonjhar in Odisha; Ajmer, Kota, Bhilwada and Alwar in Rajasthan; Kolhapur, Nasik, Jalgaon, Solapur and Amarawati in Maharashtra.