Commercial flights from Adampur soon: Parrikar

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 14

Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said today that decks had been cleared to open the Adampur air force base for commercial flights as the two requisite NoCs required from the defence authorities had been granted.

He said that a meeting would be held next month with the officials of Airport Authority of India and Air India. Parrikar said this during his visit to Hoshiarpur where he opened a war memorial. Alighting at the Adampur air force station, he first paid his respects to the 567 martyrs of the district and laid a wreath at the memorial.

He was received by Union Minister and Hoshiarpur MP Vijay Sampla and BJP national vice- president Avinash Rai Khanna. Parrikar held a meeting with the intellectuals on the two years of the Modi government followed by a media interaction.

Justifying the shoot-at-sight orders by the Indian Air Force against anyone found scaling the boundary walls of an installation, he said it was a normal practice to issue such orders in high-alert areas. He said an NIAteam was leaving for Pakistan for a probe into the Pathankot attack but the green signal from Pakistan was still awaited.

On the crash of MiG 27 and a move to ground the aircraft by 2018, he said air accidents were currently rated as 0.23 per cent for 10,000 flying hours and had reduced considerably. “We will phase them out,” he replied.

On the NCC cadets not getting their uniform, he said they would start getting these soon.