Union Minister for Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday slammed CPIM MP S Venkatesan who appeared to be stirring up the north-south divide in airports in India. The CPIM MP from Tamil Nadu on Wednesday claimed that Scindia had said that the demand for airport in Madurai in Tamil Nadu was not justified since north Indian states have only one international airport.

He further claimed that Tamil Nadu’s GST last year was higher than those collectively paid by 21 states and union territories. However, Union Minister Scindia shut up him and said that what Venkatesan was saying was gross misrepresentation of facts.

He said how some states in both north and south have more than one international airport, like Uttar Pradesh in north and Kerala in south. He further said that the decision to grant international status to airport depends on several factors like passenger demand and also proximity to other international airports in the state.

Scindia added that the union government is open to proposals for new airports in any part of the country.

He further clarified that Madurai already operates international flights and hence the communist MP’s insistence to accord the airport international status was incomprehensible. “Contrary to the allegation, I had offered I had offered @MoCA_GoI ’s support in increasing the number of international flights for Madurai by requesting Indian carriers to fly abroad from the city,” he tweeted.

Earlier in the day seven MPs from the South had given a signed representation to Union Minister Scindia to develop the Madurai Airport. It was signed by Su Venkatesan (Madurai), S Manickam Tagore (Virudhunagar), Karthi P Chidambaram (Sivagangai), K Navaskani (Ramanathapuram), P Velusamy (Dindigul), Dhanush M Kumar (Tensaki) and V Vijay Vasanth (Kanyakumari). One of the demands was to make the airport operational 24×7 and also to declare it international airport.

References:

opindia.com - OpIndia Staff