Tourism and Culture minister Satpal Maharaaz has directed officials to look for land in Haridwar or Dehradun, for an international airport. The minister held a meeting with the tourism secretary Dilip Jawalkar and Haridwar district magistrate C Ravishankar on Monday and directed them to form a committee for this purpose. Discussions were held on various aspects for building an international airport wherever land is available in Haridwar or Dehradun.  A committee will soon be formed under the Haridwar DM for identifying land in Haridwar for this purpose. The committee will look for a five kilometres long and half a kilometre wide strip of land for the international airport and inform Civil Aviation department officials about it. Speaking after the meeting, the minister said that the purpose is to build an international airport in the region so that travelers from around the world can reach Uttarakhand directly. This will also generate more employment opportunities in the future. The international airport will increase the grandeur of Haridwar district and attract people from across the world to Uttarakhand, said Maharaaz.

He further said that possibilities will be looked into to enable large aircrafts like Airbus 380 and Boeing 777 to land and take off from this international airport. It will be recalled here that last year, Maharaaz had stressed on the need to work on the vision of building an international airport in Haridwar as there are many who are interested in landing here directly from different foreign countries. Presently, both domestic and foreign travellers can reach Haridwar by road or train from various cities across India or arrive by flight to Dehradun airport and then travel by road to Haridwar.