Tripura cabinet clears flight connectivity with Chittagong

Agartala: Tripura Council of Ministers headed by Chief Minister Manik Saha on Tuesday approved the proposal of introducing international airway connectivity with Bangladesh’s Chittagong as a part of the state government’s strides to transform the state into hub connectivity of all forms, state cabinet spokesperson and information and cultural affairs minister Sushanta Chowdhury said.

The minister also informed the media persons that the government has allocated Rs 15 crore as Viable Gap Funding (VGF) for the airlines interested to ferry passengers on this route initially. He said, “It has been decided after a top-level meeting with the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Ministry gave Tripura government choices to select between Chittagong or Dhaka for air-carrier operation from Agartala International Airport and accordingly Tripura government vouched for Chittagong. The flights will operate thrice a week between Chittagong and Agartala,” he said.

On VGF, he said, “Whenever flight operations are started in new routes it is expected that 50 per cent strength of the total capacity can be achieved in the initial days. So the VGF is a kind of subsidy that the state government will bear to ensure that the flight services continue even if it does not seem profitable for a certain period.”

The minister also informed the press that the airfare is very likely to be Rs 4,500 per person and had Tripura opted for Dhaka service it would have been Rs 5,000 instead. Apart from that, the minister also said, the rural development department of Tripura has decided to constitute four more circles, six new divisions and 19 new subdivisions for better watch on the projects running all over the state.

“Under the rural development department, funds worth Rs 1,000 crore for diverse development projects are being pumped into the state. For better resource mobilization and management, a decision has been approved by the state cabinet to decentralize the system. With four new circles, each of the eight districts will be supervised by one superintendent engineer level officer,” he pointed out.  

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