Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 13: In a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Advocate Ravi Abrol seeking directions to respondents for upgrading Civil Airport Jammu at par with the international airports, Division Bench of State High Court comprising Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Sanjay Kumar today issued notice to the respondents to show cause as to why the writ petition be not admitted to hearing.
After hearing Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi with Advocate Ravi Abrol for the PIL, Division Bench also directed Director Airport Jammu to conduct physical inspection of the available facilities at the Jammu Airport. “The respondents shall take a view on the issues raised by the petitioner and file objections positively within six weeks from today”, the DB added.
The DB also directed Chief Secretary to look at the issues which are complained of by the petitioner including the hygiene, cleanliness and availability of basic facilities at the Jammu Airport.
Earlier, during the course of hearing Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi submitted, “the present Civil Airport, Jammu was built at a time when inflow of air traffic was every negligible and area around the airport was not so thickly populated”, he said, adding “with the passage of time the Civil Airport, Jammu has come within the city centre as the Jammu city has expanded far-off”.
He further submitted, “having an airport in the city centre presents a security threat as almost all the flights which are landing on the airstrip are flying over the thickly populated area thereby endangering the lives of thousands of people who are living in the area”.
In the PIL, it has been further submitted that the requirement of inflow and outflow of air traffic in Jammu has increased manifold in the recent years but there is no substantive increase in the air traffic and number of flights which are coming to and going from Jammu are not even fraction of what is the actual requirement, which leads to highly exorbitant fares.
“At times the air fare between Jammu and Delhi is much higher than the air fare of Delhi to London. Similar will be the situation with the flights with regard to the Jammu to Srinagar and vice versa”, the PIL said, adding “another problem which adds to the difficulty is the shorter airstrip at Civil Airport, Jammu which does not allow large aircrafts to land and also the aircraft landing in Jammu and taking off cannot be filled up to the maximum capacity as certain seats are to be kept vacant for the purpose of taking off and landing in view of the shorter airstrip”.
“The Civil Airport Jammu is in fact a defence airport primarily meant for landing and taking off the aircrafts of Indian Air Force and Army as such the facilities for landing of larger aircrafts are not available. Almost in all the cities of the country including the smaller cities, the large airports have been built up which are at a distance away from the cities for obviously security and strategic reasons whereas nothing of the sort has been planned for Jammu”, the PIL said.
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