Work stalled at Paro airport for lack of Indian initiative

SILIGURI: Paro, the international airport of Bhutan, is in practice a gateway to the entire eastern India too. None can deny that the betterment of Paro can boost tourism as well as other businesses in eastern India. But the ground-level capacity augmentation work at the airport is now stalled. Reason? In the main, the lack of Indian initiative to fulfil its own commitments.

Paro, located in a deep valley on the bank of the river Paro Chhu at an elevation of 7,300 ft and surrounded by peaks as high as 18,000 ft (5,500 m), is considered one of the world's most challenging airports with a very limited number of pilots certified to land there. That too, in favourable visual meteorological conditions during daylight hours only.

“Paro is only a couple of hours drive from eastern Indian tourism hubs like Guwahati or Siliguri. And we have an open border between India and Bhutan. Thus, with its link with international gateways, Paro is a two-way passage for tourists to and from eastern India. At least 40% of the premium foreign tourists visiting the eastern Himalyan region prefer tagging up Bhutan with eastern India. Naturally Paro is too important,” said veteran tourism consultant Mr. R Basu.

“The betterment of Paro can definitely boost the outside world's connection with eastern India, which is still backward in terms of entrepreneurship,” said Ex-Chairman CII North Bengal Chapter, Mr. P K Shah.

But the over-burdened airport is badly in need of capacity augmentation. In addition to risky and tight movement of aircrafts and service vehicles, there is also no proper taxiway parallel to the runway. Several shortcomings like this one are preventing the airport from initiating new services.

Aspirations are there, but according to Bhutan department of civil aviation's chief administrative officer Karma Wangchuk, capacity augmentation work there has stopped due to fund constraint. As one learns, lack of Indian initiative is a major reason for this.

Capacity augmentation, including expansion of apron area or taxiway, was supposed to be carried out under financial assistance from India.

The Indian government committed BTN 680 Million (about Rs 680 million) for the expansion in the current Plan period. The fund is yet to arrive. The earlier committed BTN 185 Million during 10th plan has just arrived. But an improvement work of navigation and communication system with an Indian assistance of Rs 84 million has already taken pace, informed an official.

More importantly, even if the fund comes, there is no space to expand as the planned area is currently occupied by Indian Air Force. Discussion between the countries since 2008 to clear it off has not yielded any result yet.

The Indian army had constructed Paro airport in 1960s.

“Now a bit of initiative from the Indian side can get things back on track,” said a senior Bhutan administrative official.