"Not Received any Proposal for Greenfield Airport in Cachar", Jyotiraditya Scindia

The contentious 'proposed' Greenfield airport project in the Doloo tea garden area of Assam's Cachar district took a new turn on as Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in a letter to Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev said that the ministry has not received any proposal to set up a Greenfield airport in that locality.

The Rajya Sabha MP had earlier sought clarification from Scindia about sanctioning an international airport in Cachar district. She had also asked for a timeline of the project provided that the ministry had already sanctioned it.

In reply to Dev's letter, the Civil Aviation Minister informed that the government of India had formulated a Greenfield airport policy in 2008, under which an airport developer or the respective state government willing to establish a Greenfield airport is required to send a proposal to the ministry in the prescribed format, a IANS report said.

There is a two-stage process for sanctioning a Greenfield airport -- site clearance followed by in-principle approval from the ministry, the statement from the ministry said.

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Scindia wrote that till date, no proposal as per the Greenfield airport policy of the government to construct a new international airport in Cachar district has been received by the ministry.

The Doloo tea estate in Assam's Cachar district has been in the midst of controversy after the state government approached the owner of the tea garden to relinquish 1,500 acres of land to set up a Greenfield airport there.

Protests erupted in the Lalbagh division of Doloo tea estate on May 12 when the district administration deployed bulldozers to clear the tea plantation from that area in order to acquire the land for the proposed airport.

Hundreds of tea garden workers rushed to the site, soaked in heavy rain, ignoring the restrictions imposed under Section 144 in the area. The workers raised slogans against the destruction of the plantation in the garden.

But due to the heavy deployment of security personnel, the workers could not enter the eviction site.

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