Soon, various airports are likely to be renamed. A proposal has been sent to the central government for renaming as many as 13 airports, including the one in Aurangabad, and the cabinet will take a decision on the same, Union Minister Dr Bhagwat Karad said. After arriving in the Aurangabad city, in Maharashtra, on Wednesday, the Union minister of state for finance said earlier, a proposal was sent to the Centre to rename the Aurangabad airport after Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji, according to a PTI report. Dr Karad was quoted in the report saying that he has been following up on the issue regularly.
At least 13 Indian airports are to be renamed and the cabinet will take a decision about the renaming of these airports, he stated. Earlier, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, while speaking at a virtual inauguration ceremony of an establishment in Aurangabad, had said that legislators who go to the national capital should pursue the matter of renaming of the airport and get it done.
A few days ago, the Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya M. Scindiain in a written reply to a question in the Parliament said the government has accorded ‘in-principle’ approval for setting up a total of 21 Greenfield Airports, which includes Mopa in Goa; Shirdi, Sindhudurg, Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra; Kalaburagi, Hassan, Bijapur and Shimoga in Karnataka; Datia (Gwalior) in MP; Noida and Kushinagar in UP; Hirasar and Dholera in Gujarat; Karaikal in Puducherry; Bhogapuram, Dagadarthi and Oravakal in Andhra Pradesh; Pakyong in Sikkim; Durgapur in WB, Kannur in Kerala and Hollongi (Itanagar) in Arunachal Pradesh. The airports accorded approval at Navi Mumbai, Mopa, Shirdi, Noida (Jewar), Hirasar, Dholera, Kannur, Bhogapuram and Kushinagar are international airports and the rest of them are domestic airports. Out of these 21 airports, eight airports- Pakyong, Durgapur, Sindhudurg, Shirdi, Kannur, Oravakal, Kalaburagi and Kushinagar have already been operationalized.