Union Minister of Civil Aviation, Jyotiraditya M Scindia said that 16 new airports will be established across five states of central India. In Madhya Pradesh, the airport will be constructed at Rewa. In Chhattisgarh, airports will be constructed at Ambikapur, Bilaspur, and Jagdalpur. Uttar Pradesh will have nine airports and one in Rajasthan. Whereas, Maharashtra will have another two airports. Today, while addressing the virtual PM-Gati Shakti Conference for the Central Zone, Scindia stated that PM Gati Shakti’s success will yield the multimodal connectivity in India that will assist in the execution of the vision of a $5 trillion economy. The Gati Shakti initiative will help in bringing additional investment in India and in creating great employment. The Union Minister mentioned that several countries in the world which include South Asian countries have focused on investing in the infrastructural sector in the past 70 years and all have transformed into developed countries. Under the leadership of PM Modi, the PM- Gati Shakti is an initiative for making India a superpower, having some of the best infrastructures. In the previous governments, no determination had been showcased for formulating and implementing several developmental schemes, however, the picture has changed now. The Minister said that in the earlier governments, only a single All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was constructed in a period of 10 years, but now under the regime of this government,15 AIIMS have been constructed in the past seven years. There were only 74 airports built in the past 70 years and now 66 airports are functioning in just the past 7 years, thus India has a total of 140 airports.The cargo capacity of the ports has expanded from 1280 million metric tonne to 1760 million metric tonne. The minister stresses the requirement for improved integration within the stakeholders, especially the States and UTs, for successful completion of the PM-Gati Shakti. Image Source