Gopalpur: Flight services from the Rangeilunda airstrip situated at close proximity to the Berhampur University has been a long standing demand of the residents of the locality. Regarding this, Ganjam district Collector Dibyajyoti Parida along with the departmental officials reviewed the air strip development works, Friday. Currently the air strip is only 975 metre long with 150 metre width and the run way is only 750 metre in length making it difficult for commencement of flight operation. For the expansion of the air strip, government and private land has been identified.
Land from the boundary up to 90 metre towards the hostel, 40 metre towards the University administrative block and 250 metre towards the Berhampur main road and nearly 30 metre from the Monarch Chowk boundary will be taken up for the expansion of the airstrip. A letter had been sent to the Higher Education department regarding the requirement of 15 acres of the University’s land for the project. The department has identified the land and replied to the Registrar of the varsity.
During the review, discussions were held regarding the development of Rangeilunda airstrip with improvements, the tender process for which has been completed and the need for surveying the technical aspects. The government will decide on operationalisation of the air strip as soon as its construction gets completed, the Collector said.
With the Collector, Berhampur sub-collector Ashutosh Kulkarni, land acquisition officer Umakanta Barik, DFO Amlan Naik, Works department superintending engineer Tapan Panigrahi, India One airport official Rahul Kumar, NCC group commandant Sachin Gupta, engineer Nirmal Naik, assistant engineer Chinmaya Tripathy, junior engineer Laxman Marandi, Kanisi additional tehsildar Kuldeep Kumar, Karapalli revenue inspector Nirakar Sethi were present during the review visit.