Ludhiana: Ludhiana, known as the Manchester of India, will soon have its own international airport. The facility is coming up at the Halwara Air Force Station, which is one of the oldest frontline airbases of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
While the tender document for the construction of new terminal building and associated works has been finalised, the construction of boundary wall and approach road is underway and almost 50 per cent complete.
The tentative cost of the civil terminal conclave to be spread across 135 acres, worked out by the Public Works Department (Buildings & Roads), is Rs 58 crore, which is subject to change by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Rs 11.31 crore is being spent on the construction of 630-metre-long boundary wall (Rs 3.01 crore) and 5.1-km-long and 5.5-metre-wide approach road (Rs 8.3 crore).
Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan reviewed the progress of the project at a virtual meeting with the district officials here recently and discussed the issues concerning the ongoing work, Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma told The Tribune here on Wednesday.
The Chief Secretary directed the district administration to ensure quality control and timely completion of the project.
“We have fixed November 10 as the target date for the completion of the project, following which the process to start the international flights from here will commence,” disclosed the Deputy Commissioner.
He said the tender document for terminal building, prepared by the PWD (B&R), was sent to the AAI for comments and observations, following which the work would be allotted likely in May. The estimated time limit for the completion of work was six months.
With the construction of the approach road and boundary wall almost at the halfway mark, they were targeted to be complete by May 31 (road) and June 9 (wall).
The decision to build a new international airport in the Maximum City of Punjab was taken after the state government had raised the demand with the Centre sometime back, following which the AAI conducted a pre-feasibility study of the Halwara IAF station and gave nod to set up international civil enclave here to meet the growing demand for civil flight operations.
24/03/21 Nitin Jain/Tribune
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
0 comments:
Post a Comment