Various forums have urged the Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri for inclusion of five Odisha airports in UDAN scheme

In a memorandum through Governor Ganeshi Lal, forums like Odisha Nagarika Samaj (ONAS), Aama Janata Adhikar(AJAD) and Mumbai-Odia Youth Association (MOYA) have sought the inclusion of the five airports in the Central scheme underscoring their importance and the benefits they would yield if feveloped as full fledged airports and made operational.

The five proposed airports are Rangeilunda(Ganjam),Konark(Puri), Kalinganagar(Jajpur),Paradip(Jagatsinghpur) and Rasgovindpur (Mayurbhanj) "In the Union Budget for the year 2020-21, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has allocated Rs1.7tn ($23.7bn) to support the country’s transport infrastructure and the UDAN scheme is developing 100 more Airports in India by 2024 but to our surprise from Odisha only 3 airports (Rourkela, Utkela of Kalahandi and Jaypore) have been flaged," the memorandum said adding however, the five more airports from Odisha should be included in the package given their economic and socio-cultural potentials.

 "The key objectives of NCAP 2016 is to “establish an integrated eco-system which will lead to significant growth of civil aviation sector, which in turn would promote tourism, increase employment and lead to a balanced regional growth.

We the people of Odisha request you to kindly include the five existing Airport/Airstrip in your Udan scheme and attempt to balance the eastern regional growth, which our honourable PM always advocates," said Lalit Mohan Pattnaik, Manoj Jena,             Nilanchal Patra who are president (ONAS), convenor (AJAD)   and  Convenor (MOYA), respectively.