‘Sukhbir hijacking credit for flight resumption from Sahnewal’

Quoting this year’s budget speech of Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal,Tewari said,“Relevant paras 38 and 39 of the speech the FM had had made make it abundantly clear that it was the Airport Authority of India which upgraded the air strip in Sahnewal near Ludhiana.”

In a statement issued here today,supported by the relevant documents including the relevant excerpts of the budget speech of Manpreet Badal and the communication between him (Tewari) and the Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and CMD of the Air India Arvind Jadhav,Tewari said it was more than clear that the state government did not make even an iota of contribution for upgrading the airport. “Rather it had failed what it was actually expected to do”,he said,while pointing out that the state government could not manage to acquire the required land for augmenting the facilities at the airport.

“This fact is also corroborated by Arvind Jadhav,who said,the Airport Authority of India had spend Rs 9-8 crore on the resurfacing and redoing of the Ludhiana airport to make it viable for operation of flights,” said Tewari.

Slamming the state government,Tewari said,“The state government had even failed to acquire the five-acre land sought by the AAI for the installation of the DVOR and isolation bay at the airport. Nor had the state government made any attempts for acquiring the land to extend the runway to make it feasible for A-320 airplane.”