Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has requested the Odisha Government to provide free-of-cost land in Puri for construction of a guesthouse for pilgrims and tourists from UP.
In a letter to his Odisha counterpart, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Yadav stated that in case the land is given to Uttar Pradesh, a guesthouse would be built in Puri by the UP Government. A similar arrangement, he said, can be worked out in Varanasi, where Uttar Pradesh would, as a quid-pro-quo arrangement, provide free land to the Odisha government to build a guesthouse for pilgrims and tourists in Kashi. Yadav has also written to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju seeking an air link between Varanasi and Bhubaneswar.