Around a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated greenfield Rajkot International Airport (RIA), the airport authorities on Thursday said that there are no plans to start operating international flights, as no airline has submitted any proposal for the same. The under-construction airport, which is likely to get a permanent terminal building next month, as of now only handles an average 10 domestic flights. The day also saw the Congress staging a dharna at Bahumali Bhavan Chowk in Rajkot, alleging that Rs 1,405 crore of taxpayers money spent on developing the airport has gone to waste, as RIA is providing the services that were already available at the old Rajkot Airport. The protest comes after some media reports claimed that the under-construction terminal building at RIA won’t be able to handle the flow of international and domestic air travellers simultaneously. The RIA, meanwhile, said that no airline has sent it any proposal to launch international flights as of now. “Airlines have not made any proposal for international flight. The terminal building will start with domestic flight operations,” RIA Director Diganta Borah said in a statement. Modi had laid the foundation stone of the new airport at Hirasar village, 31 km east of Rajkot city, on October 7, 2017. After he inaugurated the airport on July 27, 2023, the Airports Authority of India shifted flight operations from the Rajkot Airport – located on Jamnagar Road in the city – to the new airport on September 10, 2023. Since then, RIA has been handing passengers out of a cargo terminal, which has been converted into a temporary terminal, even as work continues on the permanent terminal building. On June 29 this year, part of a canopy in the passenger pick-up-and-drop area in the temporary terminal had collapsed due heavy rain. It is yet to be repaired. Borah rejected reports suggesting the under-construction terminal building won’t be able to handle international passengers. “The permanent terminal will have enough space to handle domestic and international passengers. All we need to do is divide the check-in counters, allot space for immigration and customs counters and extra space for baggage scanning. So, if any airline proposes to start international operations from Rajkot International Airport, space will be there," he said, adding that exclusive international terminal will be built when the number of international flights increase. However, Ranjit Mundhva, a Congress worker who was leading the protest on Thursday, said: “They were saying that Rajkot will get an international airport. We did get the airport. But they fooled the people. Domestic flights were already operating from the city airport. To deceive people and get their votes, they constructed the airport at Hirasar but didn’t provide facilities there. Hence, it won’t be able to handle international flights and people of Rajkot and surrounding districts will have to go to Ahmedabad to catch international flights.” The terminal building, being constructed at a cost Rs 279 crore, was to be ready by March 2024. “However, there has been some delay and the revised deadline is the end of this month. We are planning to operationalise the permanent terminal building in August,” Borah told The Indian Express. While the temporary terminal has eight check-in counters, the permanent terminal will have 36. It will also be able to handle 2,800 passengers per hour as compared to the temporary terminal’s capacity to handle 400. The Rajkot Airport had the capacity to handle 200 passengers per hour.
