Two Union Ministers from Vidarbha locked horns over the issue of developing Nagpur airport with Vilas Muttemwar accusing Praful Patel of "deliberately delaying"
NEW DELHI: Two Union Ministers from Vidarbha locked horns over the issue of developing Nagpur airport with Vilas Muttemwar accusing Praful Patel of "deliberately delaying" it, a charge dismissed as "frivolous" by the latter.
Muttemwar, Minister for New and Renewable Energy, has shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his immediate intervention to transfer the airport project to Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC).
While Muttemwar is a lone Lok Sabha member of Congress from Vidarbha region representing Nagpur, Patel is General Secretary of NCP, and has represented Bhandara in Lok Sabha earlier and is now a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Accusing Patel, the Minister of Civil Aviation, of "ill intention of putting a spoke" in the implementation of the Nagpur airport project, he said this was with the "malicious intention to thwart honest efforts made by me" for its timely execution.
"While the Minister of Civil Aviation could release a sum of Rs 150 crore for setting up an Aviation Academy at Gondia (Maharashtra) without any techno-economic feasibility report and conducting any survey in the area, he has obviously an ill intention of putting a spoke in the smooth implementation of the Nagpur airport project," said Muttemwar,who is apparently miffed over the affidavit filed by Patel's ministry in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
Dismissing the accusations as "frivolous" and a case of "sour grapes", Patel claimed that no minister has done so much for Vidarbha in civil aviation in the past 50 years than what he has done in three years.
Besides, Patel suggested that it was case of "much ado about nothing" as he has already moved the matter for listing in the Union Cabinet and it could come soon.
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