Tricity panel to deliberate on shorter route to Chandigarh International Airport

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 27

The much-awaited demand of the city residents to get a shorter route to the Chandigarh International Airport will come up for discussion during the Tricity Coordination Committee meeting to be held here tomorrow.

UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore will preside over the meeting, which will be attended by the UT Adviser and Chief Secretaries and DGPs of Haryana, Punjab and the UT.

Adviser Dharam Pal said among other issues, a shorter route to the airport would be on the agenda of the meeting.

Earlier, the road distance from the Tribune Chowk to the airport was 2.71 km, but people have to now cover extra distance to reach the airport through Mohali.

To reduce the road distance, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had recently decided to conduct a feasibility study on the connectivity to the airport from the Purv Marg side near Sector 48. The road will run through the Jagatpura area. For this, land acquisition may be required in Punjab which would be done by the state government.

In its earlier recommendations, the committee had stated that it was aware that a short approach road towards the airport was functional in the past. “But now, around 30 km extra need to be covered while travelling to the airport as the entry has been shifted to the other side and reaching it is time consuming,” said the panel.

As a huge investment has been made in the international airport, the committee, therefore, recommended that the MHA should conduct a meeting with the UT Adviser, the Chief Secretaries of Punjab and Haryana and the Secretary, Civil Aviation, to resolve the issue.

In response to the recommendations of the committee, the MHA submitted that three alternative approaches were suggested in the Chandigarh Master Plan, 2031. These alternatives were discussed at various meetings, but failed to reach a conclusion.

People have been demanding an alternative route, which will make it easier and shorter for residents of Chandigarh and Haryana to reach the airport.

The UT Administration had earlier proposed to construct a tunnel to the airport in Mohali, but the idea was dropped in the Northern Zonal Council meeting held in September 2019.

The UT Administration had sought the support of the Centre and contributions from Haryana and Punjab to construct the Rs 1,200-crore underground tunnel, connecting Chandigarh to the new airport terminal in Mohali.

The proposed route would have cut the distance to the airport from Chandigarh and Panchkula by 10 km.

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