Patna: The Bihar government has asked the Union government to start domestic flights at Gaya airport to tap the Amritsar-Calcutta freight corridor, cargo operations and industrial development in the area.

"Gaya has a full-fledged airport but has no domestic flights. It is close to the freight corridor between Amritsar and Calcutta. Domestic flights to Gaya airport will lead to industrial activity around the freight corridor, which will be roughly aligned to the grand chord railway tracks between Punjab and Bengal," said industries department principal secretary S. Siddharth.

The demand has been officially raised at the third meeting of Council for Trade Development and Promotion (CTDP) at Vigyan Bhavan on January 8.

Union minister for commerce and industry Suresh Prabhu chaired the meeting in which representatives of different states participated.

Siddharth said the state wants to create "industrial growth centres" along the freight corridor and has requested the central government to fund them on 50:50 basis, including land acquisition cost.

"Industrial growth centres would act as nodal centres for rest of the industrial areas and industrial parks. They would act as large logistics and processing centres and facilitate movement of a wide range of agriculture and industrial products. Pre-processing of agro produce could also be done at them," Siddharth added.

Industries department officials said industrial growth centres are being planned at Gaya and Dehri-on-Sone. These would serve as strategic locations for various industries in Bihar where the units could dump their products for onward movement to ports or other such points.

Proposals to have customs offices at the two centres were also pushed, which would be of immense help in the onward movement of goods from ports.

Various gas-based industries are expected to come to south Bihar to tap not only the freight corridor but also the Haldia (Bengal)-Jagdishpur (Uttar Pradesh) gas pipeline that is being laid by the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL).

"Expecting all these developments, we will have to operationalise the Gaya airport because it will be of help to industrialists, entrepreneurs, officials and people working in various industrial units," an industries department official said.

Gaya airport, which is 100km south of Patna, is spread over 954 acres. An additional 100 acres from four neighbouring villages is to be acquired for runway expansion. It has no constraints related to space and aviation sources said its runway length could be made suitable for smooth landing of all types of aircraft.

The airport at present caters to flights carrying Buddhist and Haj pilgrims and mostly sees seasonal operations.