Bhubaneswar: Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today urged Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu to set up an airport in the port town of Paradip, a fast emerging industrial hub in Odisha.

“I request you to give personal attention to examine techno-economic feasibility for setting up of an airport at Paradip as soon as possible,” Pradhan said in a letter to Prabhu.

Development of Paradip would remain incomplete without an airport as the nearest airport at Bhubaneswar (Biju Patnaik International Airport) is 135 km away which takes three hours by road. Such demand was also made by Paradip Port Trust to the Airport Authority of India earlier, he added.

Worth mentioning, Paradip is one of the major ports in Eastern India and became one of the three ports in India to have handled a cargo of over 100 million tons last year. After expansion, the port expects to handle 332 million tons of cargo per annum by 2020, thereby making it the largest port in the country.