Tourism industry leaders and workers here held a demonstration against a move by the central government to locate an international airport project at a place other than Agra.
On Thursday, they flew hundreds of colourful planes made of paper printed with a speech that, they said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had delivered in which he had promised an international airport for the City of the Taj.
The union civil aviation ministry was now planning to site the international airport at Jewar in Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, ignoring Agra's long pending claim, said demonstrators.
"If any city in India has a just claim to an international airport, it is Agra which gets the maximum number of foreign tourists," said Rajiv Tiwari, president of the Federation of Travel Agents' Associations of India.
But successive governments had failed to provide regular air connectivity with Agra, he said.
"The present airport at Kheria needs to be upgraded and provided a new terminal building and the airlines told to start regular flights from all big cities to Agra," Tiwari said.
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Kheria facility in Agra district is an Indian Air Force base-cum-public airport with very limited connectivity.
--IANS
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