New Delhi: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to expedite the process of the site clearance of Sri Jagannath Puri International Airport from the Ministry of Civil Aviation that is pending since September 2022.

During his visit to the national capital, Patnaik met with the PM on Thursday in Delhi. They spoke about a number of important matters pertaining to his state and asked that the procedure be speed up. The CM also asked PM Modi to continue offering five free connections per gram panchayat as part of Bharat Net Phase II.

A detailed project report was developed for expanding Bharat Net from gramme panchayats to villages and submitted to the Department of Telecommunication, but Patnaik also informed the Prime Minster that no decision has yet been made.

As per a press release from the Odisha government, he told PM Modi that the state's detailed project report    for converting the Bharat Net linear network into an internet protocol multi-protocol label switching ring network and expanding it to districts and the state capital had been regretted.

He also talked about the state's unfinished national highways as he asked for a judgement on internet protocol multi-protocol label switching.

Even though many of them began in 2017 and 2018, Patnaiak reminded Modi that there were still "up to eight national highway projects" that needed to be finished.

Shree Jagannath International Airport is a proposed greenfield airport at Girala village near Puri, Odisha by Airports Authority of India. The new airport has become necessary as the nearby Bhubaneswar Airport has reached its design capacity, and due to the large influx of tourists and pilIn June 2021, a team of the Airports Authority of India conducted a pre-feasibility study of the proposed project site. The report of the visit was sent to the Government of Odisha on 5 August 2021.

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