Das Munshi

Raiganj, Feb. 21: This town could well steal a march over Malda and Balurghat by having the second commercial airport in north Bengal after Bagdogra.

A team of officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) arrived here today for detailed talks with the administration and also inspected several sites where the facility can be located.

The team comprised deputy general manager Bikash Das and assistant general manager G. Banerjee. They held talks with district magistrate Manish Jain and officials of the land acquisition department.

After the meeting, an administrative official said: ?As far as the AAI is concerned, they are not in favour of having an airport in Balurghat as the place is off route. In Malda, the existing airport gets flooded during the rains and there is also the problem of mushrooming high-rises in the area.?

The team, along with district officials, also visited five spots in and around the town and sources said a site in Rampur was shortlisted as one of the most suitable.

Jain said, the administration had came to know of the AAI team?s visit on February 18.

?After discussing with the land department officials, we chose Rampur in Raiganj block, Samarpur, Bangalbari and Kamarpur in Hemtabad block and an area near the Border Security Force camp at Karnajora,? he said.

The district magistrate, however, said there was hardly any vested land that could be handed over to the civil aviation ministry.

?The land for the airport has to be acquired, but there should not be any problem. I hope that the AAI is satisfied with what we had on offer,? Jain said.

Banerjee said they were looking for land with an alignment between north-east at one end and south-east on the other. ?There are several things we are looking at. The land should not be low-lying and there should not be any high-tension cables nearby. However, this is just the preliminary stage and nothing has been finalised as yet,? he said.

West Dinajpur Chamber of Commerce general secretary Joy Narayan Somany said: ?We had placed this demand before our MP and Union minister, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi. We had told him that if we had an airport here, we could have better trading ties with the neighbouring states.?

While district Congress president Mohit Sengupta attributed today?s visit to Das Munshi?s insistence, CPM?s district secretariat member Dilip Narayan Ghosh termed this ?another stunt before the Assembly election next year?.