HYDERABAD: With general elections around the corner, no stones are left unturned when it comes to taking credit for infrastructure development. Airports, for example, surely tops the list in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh with several new ones popping up. In Telangana, however, this is hardly the case.
The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad continues to be the only option for frequent fliers, despite many promises made of constructing airports in smaller cities being made over the years. According to State government officials, the British are to be blamed for this.
Managing Director of Telangana State Aviation Corporation Ltd V N Bharat Reddy told Express that a major hurdle in the development of small airports in Telangana has been the lack of any defunct airports built during the British era. “In other States, many small airports were built by the British. The State governments just had to develop them. In Telangana’s case, however, we only had two historical airports -- one at Begumpet and the other at Warangal.
For an airport to be constructed at any other city, it has to start from the scratch - from the identification of the site and pre-feasibility study to permissions and clearances from various bodies like AAI, DGCA, Environment and Forest. It is a time-consuming process,” Reddy said. It may be mentioned here that the Andhra Pradesh government had recently inaugurated the Kurnool airport, which was developed from the scratch.
Two years ago, the State had signed an MoU with the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and Airports Authority of India (AAI), to promote the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) aka Udan. If things go well, Telangana may have airports at Warangal, Nizamabad and Kothagudem in the near future. “The AAI is due to submit its pre-feasibility report on the 1,000 acres of land identified at Kothagudem and the 900 acres of land at Nizamabad, in order to develop these airports,” Reddy said.
Warangal airport roadblock
According to an agreement between the then AP government and GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, no airport would be allowed to operate within its 150-km radius. The Warangal airport at Mamnoor is 146 km away