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President's office deals a helipad blow to Himachal

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Baldev S Chauhan New Delhi/ Shimla
Last Updated : Feb 14 2013 | 7:09 PM IST
In what is being seen as a setback to the promotion of tourism, the office of the President of India has refused to grant permission to the Himachal Pradesh government to allow it to use a VVIP helipad.
 
The Himachal government had been pursuing this case with the President's House (Rashtrapati Bhawan) in New Delhi for a while and the State Tourism Minister GS Bali had recently made a presentation in New Delhi asking permission to allow use of a helipad, some 15 km uphill from Shimla.
 
The helipad is used only by the President and Prime Minister of India once or twice a year on their visits to their summer house called Retreat, a colonial bungalow in the nearby woodlands at Charabra.
 
"Yes the President's house has turned down our permission for using this helipad and now we will have to explore other options as there is no wide space in the mountain terrain to build a helipad," said Avay Shukla, secretary (tourism) of the Himachal government.
 
The state government had pleaded that it be allowed to use this landing as it remained unused for most of the year and could help in promoting tourism in interior Shimla and Kinnaur districts.
 
The state tourism department and top hoteliers of this popular resort town had been lobbying hard for a while so that high-end tourists could be flown to the Charabra helipad to save time.
 
"This is indeed a big jolt to tourism in the state, the permission was turned down even though we were willing to vacate it when a VVIP need to use it," a top hotelier here told Business Standard.
 
"This bad news has come at a time when the state government is actually considering starting mass heli-taxi services in dozens to promote tourism in off-beat areas of the hill state," said the hotelier.
 
The state has only three small airports and some 60 helipads and two narrow British built railways tracks and roads are virtually the only mode of transport in the state.
 
This often keeps away the high-end spending tourists, who prefer to fly, away from the hill state.

 
 

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First Published: Oct 13 2006 | 12:00 AM IST

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