AGARTALA, Nov 18 - Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) has given clearance to the plan of setting up a new terminal building at Agartala Airport, State Transport department officials confirmed here on Wednesday.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) has also invited bids for engaging Project Management Consultants for carrying out the Rs 338 crore project.
Work for a new look Airport would start from February next year after fulfilling all necessary procedures. The Tripura Government has already handed over the required land for facelift work of the Agartala airport, said an official of the Transport department.
In a recent communiqu�, the Ministry of Civil Aviation clarified that 17 flights of Air India, 14 flights of IndiGo and 14 flights of SpiceJet are operating on weekly basis on Agartala-Kolkata sector and vice-versa.
The airlines are free to operate anywhere in the country subject to compliance of Route Dispersal Guideline issued by the Central Government. The matter of shortage of flights was taken with the scheduled domestic airlines and it has been understood that they are fully committed within the available operational resources and are complying with the mandatory requirements of operations in NE region.
Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha would be arriving here on November 21. However, the State Government is tight-lipped over the Union Minister�s visit keeping in mind of model code of conduct imposed for the ensuing elections to civic bodies and casual vacancies of Gram Panchayat.
Sinha is likely to flag off passenger train service on the newly-built Broad Gauge (BG) line from Lumding to Silchar but there is no official confirmation yet.
According to sources, Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has already got CRS clearance for running passenger train service on the newly laid Lumding-Silchar BG track.
The BG track was laid around six months back but the CRS had declined to give the green signal for running passenger train on safety ground leading to delay in commissioning the project.
