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Centre says no proposal yet for airport in Silchar as govt continues clearing tea garden
The response comes at a time when the Assam government has already started clearing 2500 bighas of land of Daloo, a functional tea garden in Cachar district to make way for a new airport. The process of uprooting tea bushes began on May 12.
Silchar: The central government is yet to receive a proposal for the construction of a greenfield airport in Assam’s Silchar, the Union civil aviation ministry said in response to a Right to Information request.
The request was filed after the Assam government started taking steps to clear tea bushes at the Daloo tea garden for the greenfield airport announced by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma earlier this year.
A Silchar resident, Rahul Roy, had filed the RTI on behalf of the Daloo Cha Bagan Bachao Samanway Samitee and protesting tea-garden workers. The under secretary, civil aviation ministry, Amit Kumar Jha issued the response on May 31.
The response comes at a time when the Assam government has already started clearing 2,500 bighas of land of Daloo, a functional tea garden in Cachar district, to make way for a new airport. The process of uprooting tea bushes began on May 12.
When the process started, the local administration imposed Section 144 of CrPC and deployed over a thousand policemen and CRPF personnel in the tea garden and surrounding areas to keep the law and order situation under control.
Amit Kumar Jha’s response said that, as per the Greenfield Airports (GFA) Policy (2008), an airport developer (including any state government) willing to establish an airport is required to send a proposal to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA), in a prescribed format for a two-stage process. It starts with site clearance followed by an in-principle approval in terms of GFA Policy.
The central government has so far given approval for setting up of 21 greenfield airports across the country, including one in Arunachal Pradesh. Eight of these 21 greenfield airports have started, according the ministry. But, the ministry has not received any proposal for construction of a greenfield airport at Silchar (Assam), Jha said.
In the RTI response, the ministry mentioned that officials were unable to answer a few of the queries raised and so a copy of the RTI query had been sent to the Assam government as well as the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for their inputs.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had announced the Greenfield International Airport project earlier this year and mentioned that a part of Daloo Tea Garden will be used for this. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between labour unions and administration in March 2022.
But a section of labourers started protesting against the destruction of tea bushes in April and they also expressed concern about their livelihood. Several organisations supported the agitation but since May 12 no outsider has been allowed to enter the tea-garden areas. The Assam CM on May 29 announced that each of the 1,263 families involved with the Daloo Tea Garden will get ₹1 lakh as a goodwill gesture.
Chairperson of the Assam Tea Association Rajdeep Goala, who also belongs to the tea tribe community welcomed the decision and claimed that no garden worker will lose his/her job and the chief minister will give them more gifts for cooperating with the development work.
Members of the Daloo Cha Bagan Bachao Samanway Samitee on Thursday announced that on June 5, they’ll stage a protest in front of the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Silchar because they are not being allowed to enter the tea garden. “This will be the beginning of a series of protests, and on June 15 we will organise a rally to increase public support against the uprooting of 30 lakh tea bushes,” the members said.
Reacting to the RTI reply, Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Silchar, Rajdeep Roy, said, “We are following the steps indicated by CM Himanta Biswa Sarma. Once the land is ready, the state government will officially hand it over to the airport authority.”
HT tried to reach out to the deputy commissioner of Cachar district but she did not respond.
