Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jaganmohan Reddy has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking for unconditional, expeditious approvals from the Ministry of Civil Aviation for building a new greenfield airport at Visakhapatnam.
The present airport in the port and steel city is being used for both civilian and the Indian Navy needs and it is opined that it would fall short of meeting future demands of the economic and tourism hub of Andhra Pradesh and also the needs of the Eastern Naval Command.
The Visakhapatnam airport lying between the NAD junction and Gajuwaka also has some other limitations. It is surrounded by hills on three sides, so civil flights can take off and land in one direction only. This limits the traffic to only 10 movements per hour.
So, a new airport to serve the ever growing needs of the largest city in Andhra Pradesh was planned a few years back by the Chandrababu Naidu government. The location selected was Bhogapuram, about 50 km north-east of the present airport.
Bhogapuram was proposed to be developed as a greenfield international airport in PPP mode.
MoCA had in 2016 accorded the site clearance approval for the airport with conditions to compensate the Airport Authority of India. But its validity expired.
“The project has not progressed at the desired pace due to non issuance of site clearance approval and NOC and several conditions being put up by MoCA to compensate AAI,” Reddy said in his missive on 25 February.
“It is suggested that MoCA provides unconditional fresh site clearance for the new, greenfield international airport of Visakhapatnam at Bhogapuram, at the earliest,” Reddy appealed.
“Given the importance of the project, I request your kind self to direct MoCA to issue site clearance and NOC,” the chief minister stated in his letter to the Prime Minister.
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