On Saturday, the Prime Minister inaugurated the Noida International Airport located in Jewar in Gautam Buddha Nagar, on this pretext he also addressed a big rally. A lot of people were brought from far and wide for this rally, but this show was more of an election show, because today they attacked the Samajwadi Party more than the Congress. Assembly elections will be completed in Uttar Pradesh by March next year. Here the threat to the BJP government is not from Congress but more from SP.
It is also interesting that SP has a rally in Dadri on Sunday, the very next day of today's inauguration. Jewar and Dadri are nearby. Therefore, BJP also wanted to organize a mega show on the pretext of inauguration of the airport by the Prime Minister. BJP's Yogi Adityanath government has been running continuously in Uttar Pradesh since 2017. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, SP had given a good defeat to BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
That's why BJP is in bad shape. He feels that it is necessary to conquer UP, only then the government at the Center will be able to become stable. That is why the Prime Minister focused his speech on the development of Uttar Pradesh. Repeatedly enumerated the benefits of double engine government. The Prime Minister said that the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav did not come to the same Noida where the heads of previous governments were afraid to come because according to them, Noida was a symbol of bad omen.
According to the Prime Minister, he was also told not to go to Noida. A new throne has been acquired and it will go away, but we do not consider such bad omens. The Prime Minister was in his place. The truth is that the Chief Ministers of the previous SP and BSP governments of Uttar Pradesh did not come to Noida. He said, for those people they just had to withdraw money from Noida. As if Noida is an ATM.
The first phase of Noida International Airport has been completed, the Prime Minister went to Xaver Airport at 11.30 on Monday to inaugurate it. It is being built on the lines of some big airports of the world. According to the plan, it will have 5 terminals and the length of the runway of the first phase is 3900 meters. For this, 5000 hectares of land was acquired. In the first phase, construction work has been done in 1334 hectares of land. Under construction so far, it will provide flying facilities to 1.2 crore passengers per year.
Once the work of the first phase is completed, a lot of the load of Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport will be distributed. An investment of Rs 11200 crore has been made in the first phase of this airport, built on the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. This airport is included in the country's largest green field project. After completion, this airport will look like London's Heathrow Airport.
There is no doubt that when this airport is fully developed, its glamor will be like the other amazing airports in the world, because earlier there was no construction in the area where this airport has been built. It is completely built on agricultural land. Therefore, it is being said to be the biggest green field project from environmental point of view.
This airport is just over 60 km from Noida city. On the other hand, Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport is only 35 km away. Therefore, at present this airport will be within the reach of the people of Western UP, especially Mathura, Agra, Aligarh and Meerut. For this reason, people of Noida, Delhi and Ghaziabad are not very enthusiastic about Jewar Airport, but since Dadri and Bodaki are nearby Jewar, where there are container depots and the freight corridor also ends here, hence it will definitely be useful in freight transportation.
It is also interesting that this international airport of Jewar was the flight of Shashank Shekhar Singh, a top bureaucrat of Uttar Pradesh, who had previously been a pilot. He is now deceased but three decades ago he had thought of building a world class international airport in western Uttar Pradesh. He was close to all the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh like VP Singh, Veer Bahadur Singh ND Tiwari, Mulayam Singh, Kalyan Singh, Mayawati, Ram Prakash Gupta and Akhilesh Yadav etc.
He shared with the Chief Ministers the idea of building an international airport in Noida. When the SP-BSP government was in power, he expressed his intention to build an airport near Noida to Chief Minister Mulayam Singh. Mulayam Singh wrote a letter to the Center in this regard but it was rejected outright because Indira Gandhi International Airport was already present in Delhi. The distance of this proposed airport from Delhi was also very short.
But Shashank Shekhar Singh continued his efforts. He also whispered this into the ears of Rajnath Singh. He was the Chief Minister of the state at that time. His proposal also remained pending at the Centre. But after that, when Mayawati became the Chief Minister, the development of Uttar Pradesh got wings, one, she agreed for an expressway from Pari Chowk of Greater Noida to Agra. This proposal was also from IDC Shashank Shekhar.
When Mayawati told about the problems of the government's treasury, she told them that the government should acquire the land, the expressway will be built by JP Group, they will just have to give some land on both sides of this 165 km long expressway. But Mayawati government fell in 2003. Then Mulayam Singh became the Chief Minister and he also sent the proposal of the airport to the Centre. Shashank Shekhar Singh, a senior officer in Uttar Pradesh and close to him, said that UPA government's Aviation Minister Praful Patel rejected it.
Prafull Patel said that its distance from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport was not 80 km. In the year 2007, Mayawati had a government with absolute majority. Mayawati was also from western Uttar Pradesh (Badalpur village of Gautam Buddha Nagar) and her cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh was from Muzaffar Nagar. Therefore, these people made many plans for the development of Western Uttar Pradesh. The Taj Expressway (now Yamuna Expressway) from Pari Chowk to Agra was built during this tenure.
Interestingly, Jaypee Group owner Jai Prakash is also a native of Bulandshahar district of western Uttar Pradesh. The Taj Expressway was finalized but the airport proposal got stuck in the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre. On the other hand, Mayawati decided to make Dadri a cargo hub. His plan worked. Now that there will be a cargo hub, the airport becomes a necessity.
But meanwhile in 2012, Mayawati government left and Akhilesh Yadav government was formed. His interest is to take this airport to Agra or Etawah. Rajkeshwar Singh, a senior journalist and former Information Commissioner in Uttar Pradesh, says that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav also made this announcement. His interest was to move this airport to Saifai (Etawah), but his proposal also did not materialize. Although he did build an expressway from Agra to Lucknow, but it was built entirely with government money and this expressway passes near Saifai. BJP got a massive victory in the 2017 assembly elections and Yogi Adityanath became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Now there was only one party BJP government in the state and the centre. Tuning was received and this proposal got the green signal. Despite the opposition of the GMR company that built IGI, the airport was built in Jewar.
In a way, Jewar International Airport was built on political grounds and its inauguration took place at the same time when not even a year was left for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections. Perhaps that is why the Prime Minister intensified the election campaign on the pretext of inaugurating the first phase of this airport. Akhilesh Yadav will hold his rally in Dadri on Sunday 29th March, in this too the battle bell will ring. Jewar is Rajput dominated, which is the core voter of BJP and Dadri is Gurjar dominated. That is why SP has handed over the command of Dadri to Raj Kumar Bhati, who has a good influence among the Gurjar and backward communities. Responding to today's BJP show, he said, this was just the air talk of the party. What benefit will the common farmers and local people get if the airport is built?
