Paucity of infrastructure to support the Indian civil aviation industry will continue to remain a major impediment to its growth unless there is radical change in policies

While interacting with the media on the sidelines of the 49th Conference of Director General of Civil Aviation of Asia-Pacific Region in October 2012, Minister of Civil Aviation Ajit Singh said that in order to improve aviation infrastructure in the country, the government had drawn up a plan to build 15 Greenfield airports and modernise or upgrade in the region of 50 non-metro airports in the next few years. He also assured the nation that the upgraded airports at Chennai and Kolkata would be fully operational in the near future. He also added that the Ministry was taking steps to propel the nation to the position of one of the top five civil aviation markets in the world. As per a written reply by the Minister of Civil Aviation in the Rajya Sabha, passenger traffic is expected to grow from 143.43 million in 2010-11 to 293.48 million in 2017-18. With passenger traffic exceeding twice the level of the last fiscal in a period of seven years, it would require a quantum jump in the infrastructure for civil aviation available in the country. This undoubtedly would call for not only lofty plans that the Minister has been talking about in public forums but more importantly, concrete and speedy action on the ground. But are the plans of the government and their execution on track?

One state in the country that has enormous potential to contribute to growth in air traffic is Uttar Pradesh (UP), the home state of the Minister of Civil Aviation Ajit Singh. Airports in the major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad handle 70 per cent of the air traffic in India and none of these are located in UP. This most populous state in the country boasts of 18 per cent of India’s population but tragically contributes only to the tune of 1.8 per cent to passenger traffic. As per the Minister, ”The number of persons travelling from UP to the Middle East is higher than that from Kerala, while the number of flights from UP is substantially lower in comparison. To fly out of the country, most of the air passengers travel to Delhi by road or rail to board an international flight.” It is therefore not difficult to understand why his home state UP has been the focus of Ajit Singh’s efforts at development of airport infrastructure.

The Minister has been personally steering the effort at the development of new airports or upgradation of existing airports in UP with special emphasis on improving connectivity to Tier-II and Tier-III cities. He has projected three times in one week, request in writing to the Government of UP to transfer the existing airfields at Meerut (which is his Lok Sabha constituency), Faizabad and Moradabad to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for developing these as full-fledged airports. The Minister has also written to the state government seeking allocation of land in the vicinity of the Indian Air Force airfields at Kheria (Agra) and at Bamrauli (Allahabad) as also at Jhansi to develop the required facilities for civil aviation. Since March 2012 when the Samajwadi Party came to power, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has been seeking support from the state government for developing airports in at least six of the cities in the state including those in Bareilly and Gorakhpur. Unfortunately, despite repeated requests and that too in writing, the state government continues to be completely indifferent. They have not even acknowledged receipt of the letters of request originated by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, leave alone even the faintest sign of action on the ground.