BENGALURU: The state government has decided to write to the Ministry of Civil Aviation to approve operation of flights from Bengaluru to Tirupati. This was conveyed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to officials who had met on Friday to discuss plans for renovation and new constructions on the state government’s land in Tirumala and Tirupati.
At the meeting attended by Additional Chief Secretaries M Lakshminarayana and K Ratnaprabha and Commissioner of Muzrai Department S P Shadakshara Swamy, the CM directed officials to come up with a proposal for construction of guesthouses in Tirumala.Tirupati has a small airport at Renigunta and presently a few airlines are operating flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam. Additional Chief Secretary Rathna Prabha said that since the travel time from Bengaluru is about six hours by road, flight services can be considered in the interest of people.
“This is a request from the state on behalf of our people who visit Tirupati. As it is necessary for Civil Aviation Ministry to approve flights on the route, we have taken the first step of writing to them for approval. It can be taken forward in two ways; either the ministry can tell operators to operate flights on this route or operators themselves can come forward to operate flights once the approval is given. It is for them to take a call. We are merely expressing our requirement for the route to be approved,” Additional Chief Secretary Lakshminarayan said.
The state government will now be preparing a proposal to construct a guesthouses at Tirumala on the land it owns. “Karnataka owns seven acres of land in Tirumala and since 2005, we wanted to construct guesthouses on 61,390 sqft of land. But since the land was involved in a protracted litigation, we could not do anything. We received information only on Thursday that Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) have asked us to go ahead with the construction,” Ratnaprabha said.At present, there are 86 rooms at the Tirumala guesthouse which will also be renovated along with the construction of the new guesthouse.