Andhra Pradesh, Telangana must pay for airports: P Ashok Gajapathi Raju

Hyderabad: Making the Centre’s stand clear, civil aviation minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Tuesday said it is for Telangana and AP governments to build airports wherever they want, purely based on the resources generated by them and passenger traffic estimates. While speaking to the media in Delhi about the performance of the government in the past 100 days, Mr Raju said, “Barring issues regarding security, we do not get involved in the governments’ decisions to set up airports. They are free to decide where to set up airports based on passenger traffic and resources mobilisation estimates.”

When a scribe pointed out that the AP government proposed airports at both Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram, the minister, who represents the Vizianagaram Lok Sabha constituency, said, “Is there sufficient passenger traffic for Vizianagaram? I don’t know.” He further said there were some air strips built by Britishers that could be revived. long ago, and added that if the state government wanted to revive them by operating small aircraft, not just for passengers, but also for cargo purposes, it was welcome to do so.