Union Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel today gave an in-principle clearance to the direct Amritsar-Toronto link with an Air India flight. An assurance to this effect came at the end of an hour-long meeting the minister had with a Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) delegation led by Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to the former’s residence in New Delhi today.
The flight had been discontinued from October 2010. Patel asked Air India Chairman-cum-Managing Director Arvind Jadhav to expedite the resumption of the Amritsar-Toronto flight within a “definite and narrow time (frame)”.
The Union minister also declared that the foundation stone of the domestic terminal at Bathinda (Punjab) will be laid on January 20 next year to provide global air-connectivity to the Malwa belt of the state. Patel himself would fly down to Bathinda for the ceremony.
A memorandum submitted by the delegation to the minister stated that following the discontinuation of the Amritsar-Toronto flight, NRIs from all over the world are utterly resentful. The memorandum further said that cancellation of this flight was causing harassment to the passengers as they now have to travel for at least seven to eight hours to reach Delhi by road.
