New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) There are 25 airports across the country which don't have night landing facilities. Kushinagar airport, Shimla airport and recently inaugurated Deoghar airport in Jharkhand are among the list of 25 airports.
The ministry of civil aviation on Monday said in the Rajya Sabha that the upgradation or modernisation of airports, including provision of night landing facility is a continuous process and is undertaken by Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other airport operators from time to time depending on the availability of land, commercial viability, socio- economic considerations, traffic demand and willingness of airlines to operate to/from such airports etc.
"Presently night landing facility which is purely demand and need based on operational requirement of airlines and availability of land is not available at 25 operational airports with scheduled flight operations," said the ministry.
The list of airports not having night landing facility also include airports like Kullu and Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur and Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh, Kalaburagi in Karnataka, Kolhapur and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra and and Ludhiana in Punjab among others.
AAI has undertaken installation of a night landing facility at Kolhapur airport. A team of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has carried out the inspection of the airport on June 10, 2022. AAI has already initiated action for compliance of the observations made by DGCA during the inspection.
The country has over 100 operational airports and officials said that the airports not having night landing facilities are mostly those recording lower air passenger traffic. Airports Authority of India, which manages most of the airports in India, takes up a particular one for consideration for providing night landing facilities, when airlines show an interest during night operations.
The Minister was talking ahead of the session he will be chairing as part of the Regional Conference with Ministers from six states and UT of Andaman & Nicobar Islands to review the progress made under Jal Jeevan Mission and Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen on Wednesday.
The price of crude oil in the international market has reached $117 per barrel. According to experts, if the Russia-Ukraine war continues, then crude oil prices could reach $ 185 per barrel.
"Under 'Operation Ganga' to rescue Indian citizens, 1,314 Indians have been airlifted today by seven special civilian flights from Ukraine's neighbouring countries. With this, more than 17,400 Indians have been brought back since the special flights began on 22nd February, 2022."
Channi also said that 997 students from the state were in Ukraine, out of whom 420 have returned, and 200 students have reached Poland and are safe but some of the people are still stuck in Ukraine.
In 2017, the Aam Aadmi Party had got around 23 per cent votes but the projections for this election is 39 per cent, while Congress seems to have lost around 11 per cent votes, against in last election's over 38 per cent now, to around 26 per cent and may see its tally come down from 77 seats to 25 seats.
Harjot's brother Prabhjot Singh, who resides in Delhi's Chhattarpur, told IANS: "The last conversation I had with Harjot was on February 26 at 9 p.m. I haven't spoken to him since then. On March 2, at night, he contacted the family and informed them about his injuries.
