Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal on Friday visited infrastructure giant GMR’s MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) facility at the international airport besides the Genome valley life sciences park with the aim of establishing similar facilities at Mohali.
While GMADA proposes to establish a MRO facility at the Mohali international airport to create a north Indian hub for maintenance of aircraft, the Punjab government wants to establish bio-tech incubators and manufacturing facilities at its Biotech Park site in Mohali. “My aim is to establish a world class MRO facility at Mohali which will not only cater to the Delhi airport but will also eventually become a maintenance hub for south-east Asia,” said Sukhbir, while interacting with GMR CEO Uday Naidu. He was given a brief presentation on the MRO facility established by GMR and also toured the facility to understand its operations hands on.
GMR group also evinced interest in taking part in a competitive bid to establish a Greenfield airport at ludhiana on the occasion. Sukhbir also visited Genome valley at Turkapally during the course of which he interacted with the management of IKP Park and Alexandria Park.At the IPK Knowledge Park, Sukhbir was given a detailed presentation on how the facility had developed into a centre which housed 76 companies which were doing research on life sciences and had already resulted in 110 start ups and 200 patents.
He invited IPK to provide technical assistance to the Punjab government for establishing a Biotech park on 70 acres of land at Mohali. Park CEO and MD Deepanwita Chattopadhyay assured full cooperation in this regard.During the course of interactions at the IPK Park and the Alexandria Park, experts spoke about the dire need of establishing a centre for research in life sciences while stressing that there was no such quality centre in North India.
Sukhbir assured that research on life sciences would form an important aspect of the biotech park. He said the Government would work on a healthy mix of incubators and manufacturers for Mohali biotech park with the twin objective of encouraging start ups as well as ensuring major international players could be a part of the Park.