Berhampur: The expansion plan of the old Rangeilunda airstrip adjacent to the Berhampur University is facing hurdles as villagers are not willing to vacate the land required for the purpose.

"We need at least 31 acres of private land to expand the airstrip. The villagers, including Karapalli and Rangeilunda sarpanches, S. Menaka Reddy and B. Chandreya Reddy, respectively, are opposing the plan," said the works department's executive engineer Sasank Sekhar Mishra, who is in charge of the Rangeilunda airstrip.

The sarpanches said villagers living on the private land demarcated for the project depend on farming on the area. They said the expansion area should cover towards Ramchandrapur nearby.

"We have already ventilated our views to the department," said S. Menaka.

A four-member AAI team, led by joint general manager (PLG) P.K. Mahapatra, visited Rangeilunda and Ramchandrapur to study the feasibility of developing a low-cost small airport on August 6, 2013. The experts had said the proposed site at Ramchandrapur was a low-lying area and the natural flow of water to the area could not be checked.

The cost for filling the area with soil would be tremendously high. So, they opted for Rangeilunda.

Mishra said: "The 895-metre-long runway is insufficient for take off and landing of a commercial aircraft. We need at least 1,800 metres runway. For this, we require 46 acres, of which, 31 acres are private land with 32 houses. The budget expenditure would be Rs 43 crore, including Rs 9 crore for the charges towards land acquisition," he said.

The first flight took off from Gopalpur to Bhubaneswar after launching of a non-scheduled air charter service by Global Avianautics (GAL) which was running the Government Aviation Training Institute for the state government in Bhubaneswar on April 12, 2011. Since then, the take off plan of the airstrip has been grounded.

The airstrip spread over 40 acres was built during the British era during the World War II.