Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to compensate the farmers whose land has been acquired for the Noida International Airport (NIA) in Jewar, and asked why they were left with no option but to live in tents.
Modi is set to lay the foundation stone of the Noida International Airport (NIA) in Jewar today.
Tagging a media report which claimed that some farmers were living in tents as they had not been allotted plots elsewhere, while others had not been paid compensation for the land acquisition for the airport, Priyanka Gandhi asked why farmers in Jewar had not been paid compensation for their land.
Why are the families of farmers left with no option but to live in tents in this bitter cold, she asked.
“Compensation is the right of farmers. Narendra Modi ji, if your intentions with respect to farmers are honest, then don’t leave the farmers homeless to fulfil your electoral ambitions,” Priyanka Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.
The development of the first phase of the airport is being done at a cost of over ₹10,050 crore.
Spread over more than 1,300 hectares of land, the completed first phase of the airport will have the capacity to serve around 1.2 crore passengers a year and work on it is scheduled to be completed by 2024.
Taking to Twitter, the prime minister had said that the project will boost commerce, connectivity and tourism.
“Tomorrow, 25th November is a major day for India’s and Uttar Pradesh’s strides in infra creation. At 1 PM, the foundation stone of the Noida International Airport will be laid. This project will significantly boost commerce, connectivity and tourism,” the PM had tweeted on Wednesday.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Uttar Pradesh will become the only state in India to have five international airports. This airport will be the second international airport to come up in Delhi NCR. It will help decongest the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport.
As per PMO, the airport is strategically located and will serve the people of cities including Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Agra, Faridabad and neighbouring areas.
The Noida International Airport will be implemented in four phases and work on the first phase is scheduled to be completed in 36 months, said Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Bansal. “The traffic of 12 million passengers per year is expected in the first phase and by the completion of final phase i.e. between 2040-50, the capacity of Jewar airport will be to handle 70 million passengers per year,” Bansal said.
He also informed that the Uttar Pradesh government is spending ₹ 4,326 crore on the acquisition of land and rehabilitation and resettlement. Bansal said that the Prime Minister is personally monitoring the project. It will be executed by the international bidder Zurich Airport International AG as a concessionaire.