Air India flight between Ahmedabad-London launched by UPA, not NDA govt: Congress leader

In a statement, Vyas contested the claims of Modi that a direct Ahmedabad-London and London-Ahmedabad flight was launched by NDA government in 2003 when Atal Bhari Vajpayee was prime minister.

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Vyas challenged Modi to produce evidence with regard to his claims.

The Congress leader said that the fact was that a direct air service was launched by Air India at the insistence of Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel and the then Union Minister Dinsha Patel after Congress-led UPA government came to power in 2004. But it was closed down in 2009 due to huge revenue losses.

He said that when the then Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel came to inaugurate the terminal-2 of the Ahmedabad International Airport in 2010, a delegation consisting of state politicians including current state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki, Shankersinh Vaghela, Siddharth Patel as also Narendra Modi as chief minister had met the minister and submitted a memorandum to him to  restore Ahmedabad-London direct flight.

Vyas said that Praful Patel clearly told the delegation that a direct flight was not viable because of lack of enough revenue generation. But Modi remained silent and did not even think of restoring the flight during the last 18 months  since he became he became PM in May 2014. He woke up only  after Indians in London reminded him.

Stating that if Modi was so concerned about the welfare of Gujaratis, he sould launch direct flight between Ahmedabad and  New York also because a large number of  Gujaratis were settled in US and faced difficulties. According to Vyas, Ahmedabad-NewYork flight had a six hours halt at Mumbai and it took 22 hours to reach New York. If a direct air service was launched between Ahmedabad and New York, Vays said that the journey duration would come down to 14 hours.