Patna, February 21 Senior BJP leader and former Union Civil Aviation Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy expressed hope on Saturday that the Greenfield Sonepur Airport project in Bihar will help the state emerge as "an aviation hub of South Asia."
Speaking to reporters here, Rudy said, "The decision of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to give the green signal to South Asia's largest airport, which has a catchment area covering 35 crore people, is epoch-making and will positively impact a large region beyond Bihar."
He said that the Government of India granted "site clearance" for the airport to be built on Friday itself.
"The Bihar Government has also floated the Request for Quotation (RFQ). After four months of the RFQ, there will be an in-principle approval, and we will proceed to the tender process," he added.
Rudy, a Member of Parliament from the Saran assembly constituency in Bihar, said that even before the official information about the airport became public, the state government was ensuring the construction of a network of seamless transit routes leading up to the prospective airport.
"When I urged CM Nitish Kumar to widen the JP Setu from two lanes to six lanes with the perspective of interlinking North Bihar, my primary goal was to connect other regions with Sonepur," he said.
He added that the construction of the Dighwara-Sherpur bridge at a staggering cost of Rs 6,000-8,000 crore, the 18-km Bakarpur-Dumariya Ghat road, and the North Ring Road coming out of Dighwara, will all connect the upcoming airport with different regions of the state.
Describing the project as a personal dream he had been nurturing for over a decade, Rudy, a trained commercial pilot, said that it is perhaps the biggest highlight of his 40-year-long political career.
"When I was the Civil Aviation Minister under the Vajpayee government, several airports were constructed after my signature. There had always been a feeling that I was not able to achieve this in my birthplace, Bihar. Although it took me 16 long years, the realization of this goal is finally on the table," he said.
Rudy revealed that the Government of India had given approval to this project way back in 2020.
"Responding to my question in the Parliament in 2018, the then Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that as soon as the Bihar Government provides the land for the Greenfield airport, the Central government will move the project forward," the Saran MP said.
He said that the pre-feasibility assessment for the Sonepur airport was completed within two months of him writing a letter to the Chairman of Airports Authority in 2019, and the Obstacle Limitation Survey (OLS) was done in another two. This, Rudy said, usually takes 7-8 years.
Rudy confirmed that the government is working on eliciting commitments and MoUs from international carriers to operate their aircraft through the airport.
The Saran MP claimed that Bihar will also become a hub for aviation training in the next 10 years, as several airports are being built across the state.
"Bihar has the potential to become a major hub for aviation training in the next 5 to 10 years. People who used to go to Australia, England, the USA, etc. for training, will no longer have to do so," Rudy said.
He claimed that Code-E aircraft, which can only land at selected airports like Dubai, Sharjah, and Delhi, will also land in Bihar once the Sonepur airport becomes operational.