HC notice to Centre on plea seeking status report

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 10

The Mohali Industries Association today moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking directions to the Union of India to submit a status report on recarpeting and upgrading of the runway at the Chandigarh international airport.

Taking up the application filed through senior advocate Puneet Bali, the Division Bench of Justice Ajay Kumar Mittal and Justice Amit Rawal today issued notice for November 14.

Appearing before the Bench, Bali also prayed that the timings for recarpeting and upgrading work should also be changed from 4 pm to 5 am. He added that it should rather be from 7 pm to 7 am so that the timings of the domestic and international flight operations were not affected in any manner and passengers were not put to inconvenience.

The Bench was also told that no substantive work on the runway was being carried out at present by the contractor. As a result, the activities at the airport had virtually come to a standstill.

Going into the reasons behind the prayer for change in the timing, Bali contended the airport was the closest airfield for Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, parts of Haryana and Uttarakhand. It needed at least 13 hours of flight operations daily following change in the weather and foggy conditions. “With the present flight timings from 5 am to 4 pm, many flights are being cancelled and getting delayed making it unsuitable for the passengers to use air travel from the Chandigarh international airport,” he added.

Referring to High Court orders dated August 16 and August 28, Bali said the Bench had observed that the Airport Authority of India had agreed to close the runway from 4 pm to 5 am from Mondays to Saturdays with no flying operation on Sundays from November 1 to March 31, 2018.