Hyderabad international airport: RGIA name on NTR people’s wish says Gajapathi Raju

New Delhi: Union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said that at the proposal stage, the then TDP government had named the airport at Shamshabad after TDP founder N T Rama Rao. When it was operationalised in 2008, it was named solely after Rajiv Gandhi.

“It was done against the wishes of the Telugu people,” the minister said. He said he was one of the persons then who had wanted that it should be named after NTR and added that his position on the matter would not change. The minister said that since the people had wanted the airport to be named after NTR, there was nothing wrong if a move is made to “see it through”.

Asked whether this would not face political opposition from the Congress, he said he had “faced opposition” earlier as well. Mr Raju also lashed out at the UPA-2 government, saying it had not fulfilled promises made to the people and wondered whether the UPA-2 government and its (then) Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh were transparent in their functioning.

Soon after this, parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu also strongly justified the demand to rename the airport after NTR.