Make airport accessible to foreign airlines, Tewari urges Pb, Haryana CMs

Chandigarh MP and former Union Minister Manish Tewari today urged the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana, besides the UT Administrator to take up the issue of designating the Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Chandigarh International Airport in Mohali as a points of call (POC) with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

He said that he had discussed the matter with the Union Minister of Civil Aviation Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu and also raised the matter in the Lok Sabha.

Tewari said while the Union Minister during his meeting had assured him that the ministry would take a policy call on it, given that similar requests had come in from various state capitals across the country, but in an answer to his question in the Lok Sabha, the Ministry straightway declined to designate the airport as POC on the pretext that they want to incentivise India-registered carriers to fly to international destinations from non-metro airports.

The senior Congress leader pointed out that since Chandigarh was the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, the Chief Ministers of the two states, besides the Punjab Governor must also take up the matter with the Centre for designating Chandigarh airport as POC.

The MP said the Union Minister had assured him that he had received similar representations from other state capitals and would be taking a view with regard to designating Chandigarh airport and other such airports as points of call (POC).

“Unfortunately, I was quite taken aback in response to an unstarred question asked by me on March 20, which was answered by your Minister of State, Murlidhar Mohol.

The answer categorically states that Chandigarh airport will not be granted a POC status”, Tewari said in a letter to the Union Minister of Civil Aviation.

The former Union minister observed, “This actually is contrary to the earlier assertions made on the same answer, which say that the criteria for designating an airport as a POC is if there is a large diaspora that travels frequently from that airport to various other parts of the world.”

He pointed out that in this case, a large number of people from Punjab regularly travel to Canada, USA, UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and UAE for both work and tourism. Therefore, he argued that the airport squarely fits into the criteria for being designated as a POC.

Quoting the ministry’s answer to his question, he said, “There are 31 POCs already designated, which include places like Ghorakpur, Nagpur and Bagdogra, where I do not think there is substantive international traffic.”