Scindia gifts 44 new UDAN to Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh is going to take lead in inter- city air connectivity within the state in the country if the dream of Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia , MP from the state comes true. After his taking over as  Civil Aviation Minister in July this year, he is trying to increase the air connectivity at all the present airports of the state with smaller districts as well as other states under the UDAN scheme launched by prime minister Narendra Modi in  April 2017.

The state has been allotted 44 flights within a period of around of one month only, focussing mainly  Gwalior ( the home ground of his late father and his probable future poilitical battle ground ), Indore , Jabalpur and Bhopal. After Gwalior ,which has been the major gainer of 22 flights, Jabalpur has got 8 new flights making it total 16 flights while Indore has got 6 flights. For Jabalpur he has approved a plan of Rs. 421Cr. for expansion of  airport terminal building construction, runway length extension and ATC tower to be completed by December 2022. Incidentally most of these flights are either from private airlines i.e  Indigo or SpiceJet but not from the govt. own carrier Air India.

Bhopal being the capital has also been connected with major cities of country like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangaluru, Hyderabad, Prayagraj and Pune. Efforts are on to connect Agra and Lucknow also. Like wise Gwalior has presently been connected with Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad and likely to be connected with Bangaluru and Jaipur. In Gwalior,weekly frequency of flights has been increased from 56 to 78 in the past two months. However experts while welcoming the move have doubts over the success of this scheme for a common citizen till the fares are not made pocket friendly keeping in mind the increasing fuel prizes as well as post covid financial burden.