Patna, Feb 21 (PTI) Senior BJP leader and former Union civil aviation minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy on Saturday expressed hope that the greenfield Sonepur Airport project in Bihar will help the state emerge as “an aviation hub of South Asia.” Talking to reporters here, Rudy said, “The decision of the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to green signal South Asia’s largest airport, which has a catchment area covering 35 crore people, is epoch-making and will positively impact a large region beyond Bihar.” He said that the Government of India granted “site clearance” on Friday itself for the airport to be built.
“The Bihar Government has also floated the Request for Quotation (RFQ). After four months of the RFQ, there will be an in-principle approval, and we will go to the tender process,” he added.
Rudy, a Lok Sabha MP from the Saran assembly constituency in Bihar, said that even before the official information about the airport came in public domain, the state government was ensuring the construction of a web of seamless transit routes leading up to the prospective airport.
“When I urged CM Nitish Kumar to widen JP Setu from two lanes to six lanes with a perspective of interlinking North Bihar, my goal was primarily to connect other regions with Sonepur,” he said.
Construction of Dighwara-Sherpur bridge at a staggering cost of Rs 6,000-8,000 crore, the 18-km Bakarpur-Dumariya Ghat road, the North Ring Road coming out of Dighwara, will all connect the upcoming airport with different regions of the state, he added.
Describing the project to be a personal dream he had been nurturing over more than a decade, Rudy, a trained commercial pilot, said it is perhaps the biggest highlight of his 40-year long political career.
“When I was the Civil Aviation Minister under the Vajpayee government, several airports were constructed after my signature. There had always been an angst that I was not able to do that in my birthplace Bihar. Although it took me 16 long years, the realisation of the goal is finally on the table,” he said.
Rudy revealed that the Government of India had given approval to this project way back in 2020.
“Responding to my question in the Parliament in 2018, the then Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that as soon as the Bihar Government provides the land for the greenfield airport, the Central government will move the project forward,” the Saran MP said.
He said that the pre-feasibility assessment for the Sonepur airport was completed within two months of him writing a letter to the Chairman of Airports Authority in 2019, and the Obstacle Limitation Survey (OLS) was done in another two. This, Rudy said, usually takes 7-8 years.
Rudy confirmed that the government is working on eliciting commitments and MoUs from international carriers to run their aircraft through the airport.
The Saran MP claimed that Bihar will also become a hub for aviation training in the next 10 years, as several airports are being built across the state.
“Bihar’s potential for captains and pilots is among the greatest in the next 5 to 10 years. People who used to go to Australia, England, the USA, etc. for training, will not have to do so any further,” Rudy said.
He claimed that Code-E aircraft, which can land at only selected airports like Dubai, Sharjah and Delhi, will land in Bihar as well once the Sonepur airport becomes operational. PTI SUK NN
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