1,446 families to be affected by expansion of Kangra airport: Himachal CM Sukhu

“The techno-feasibility study revealed that it could be expanded by acquiring more area. Inhabitants of 10 out of 14 villages are ready for acquisition of their land for the project,” said Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu

The project to expand the Kangra airport at Gaggal would affect 1,446 families of 14 villages, chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Thursday, adding that the government would provide proper rehabilitation package to rehabilitate and compensate the displaced.

The project to expand the Kangra airport at Gaggal would affect 1,446 families of 14 villages, Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Thursday, adding that the government would provide proper rehabilitation package to rehabilitate and compensate the displaced. (HT Photo)

He was replying to a question jointly asked by MLAs Vipin Singh Parmar, Pawan Kajal, Chaitanya Sharma and Sudhir Sharma. Sukhu said that the Kangra airport is being expanded to enable landing of bigger aircraft.

“The techno-feasibility study revealed that it could be expanded by acquiring more area. Inhabitants of 10 out of 14 villages are ready for acquisition of their land for the project,” said the chief minister.

He said that the government would hold talks with residents of other villages who are concerned about their livelihood and their issues would be resolved.

The government does not want to displace any family and it would come out with a rehabilitation scheme for affected families and no one would become homeless due to construction of airports, he said.

Jai Ram also demanded to provide compensation in factor two of market rates to the affected families while Parmar said that the previous government had allocated ₹1,000 crore for land acquisition for Mandi Airport and ₹500 crore for Kangra airport.

Sukhu said that the state government intends to build both the airports soon.

He said that the previous governments had tried to increase the air connectivity by building airports but none of the project could be completed.

“Our government would try to complete the expansion of airport by completing all necessary process for which opposition members should also cooperate,” he said.

The Himachal Pradesh government would continue the 125 free unit power scheme to domestic consumers in the state and the government has provided a ₹300 crore subsidy to extend the scheme. This was stated by Sukhu while replying to a joint query raised by BJP members, Vinod Kumar (Nachan), Deep Raj (Karsog), and Prakash Rana (Joginder Nagar) during the question hour.

Replying to a query on the promise of giving 300 units of free power to domestic consumers, Sukhu said that by expanding the free power from 125 units to 300 units in the state his government would complete all the 10 guarantees in the next five years. On being accused by the opposition members for delaying and not completing the election promise, he said that former chief minister Jai Ram Thakur could not claim the entire credit for starting the 125 free power schemes as it was former chief minister Virbhadra Singh who first launched this scheme by launching free power up to 0 to 60 units to domestic consumers.

He said the same scheme of free power was further extended by the Jai Ram Thakur by issuing zero bills to domestic consumers on electricity consumption up to 125 units per month. Currently, around 16 lakh domestic consumers have benefited from this scheme every month in the state. This scheme is also continued by the present government to expand it in future by issuing 3,000 units of free power.