Centre to set up 29 airstrips on national highways for emergency landings of fighter planes

The buzz last November was that the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways was planning to set up 11 emergency landing airstrips on national highways across the country, starting with one near Dwarka, Gujarat, in order to help with disaster management. But the Modi government is now thinking bigger.

According to The Hindustan Times, the Centre plans to set up 29 such airstrips at strategic locations for emergency landings by fighter aircraft.

The proposed locations include highways and roads near the international borders in states like Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Manipur and West Bengal, as well as Maoist-affected areas.

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So highways connecting Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are also part of the plan, besides emergency airstrips in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

In 2016, the transport ministry had set up an inter-ministerial joint committee with the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Air Force (IAF) to look into the feasibility of the highway-cum-runway proposal.

"The work of site survey and inspection as well as the planning and bidding of the Emergency Landing Facilities (ELFs) are at different stages. The completion period of work has been kept as eight months," Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Mansukh Mandaviya informed Lok Sabha last week.

Out of the 29 proposed stretches, bidding is reportedly underway for airstrips on three highways - from Kharagpur, West Bengal, to Keonjhar in Odisha at a proposed cost of Rs 97.51 crore; from Nellore to Ongole in Andhra Pradesh (Rs 79.84 crore), and from Bijbehara to Chinar Bagh in J&K. Five other proposed stretches in West Bengal, J&K, Odisha, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are facing delays due to issues related to wildlife and land acquisition.

But quite a few have been scrapped. According to the transport ministry, four proposed projects in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have been deemed "non- feasible" while two of projects in J&K and West Bengal have been kept on hold after "discussions with local IAF units", the daily added.

Currently only one highway-cum-runway strip is operational - on the Lucknow- Agra Expressway in Uttar Pradesh. In 2016, this stretch was used for landing six fighter aircraft for the first time.

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