Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday requested the Odisha government to provide free-of-cost land at Puri for construction of a guest house for pilgrims and tourists from the state.
In a letter to his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, Yadav stated that in case the land was given to Uttar Pradesh, a guest house would be built at Puri by the state government.
A similar arrangement, he said, can be worked out in Varanasi, where Uttar Pradesh would, as a quid-pro-quo arrangement, provide free land to the Odisha government to build a guest house for pilgrims and tourists in Kashi.
Yadav has also written to union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju, seeking an air link between Varanasi and Bhubaneshwar.