The Arunachal Pradesh government on Thursday named the under-construction greenfield airport — the state’s third here in the state capital Itanagar as “Donyi Polo Airport”, officials said.
An official at the Chief Minister’s Office said that the state cabinet in its meeting on Thursday approved the name of the airport as “Donyi Polo Airport”. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu chaired the meeting.
The official said that the name of the lone airport in the capital city would symbolise the age-old tradition and rich cultural heritage of the tribal dominated state and also would reflect the people’s age-old indigenous reverence on the Sun (Donyi) and the Moon (Polo).
The Central government had earlier accorded its approval for setting up of the “greenfield airport” under the ‘Capital Connectivity Scheme’ to build up fixed wing air connectivity facility to the state capital which was a long cherished dream of the people of the bordering state, the official added.
The “Donyi Polo Airport” airport in Itanagar would be Arunachal Pradesh’s third airport after Pasighat and Tezu airports, and northeast India’s 16th airport.
The Chief Minister had earlier said that work on the airport is on war-footing and shall be made operational soon.
The Airport Authority of India has undertaken a Rs 650 crore project to develop the airport to boost air connectivity in the mountainous areas.
Currently, there are 15 operational airports in the northeastern region — Guwahati, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Tezpur, Lilalabari and Rupsi (Assam), Tezu and Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh), Agartala (Tripura), Imphal (Manipur), Shillong (Meghalaya), Dimapur (Nagaland), Lengpui (Mizoram) and Pakyong (Sikkim).
