Praful Patel says seat-sharing talks with Congress in final stage for LS polls

Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel has said that his party, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), may enter into a pre-poll alliance with the Congress in Gujarat for the coming general elections. He was talking on the sidelines of laying a foundation stone of the new integrated terminal building at Vadodara airport on Thursday.

Patel said that his party will contest from three seats. Patel said that both the parties had an alliance in Gujarat assembly polls held in December 2007 and hoped it will continue.

"Because of this alliance, the NCP had won three assembly seats in Gujarat and we want to contest on three Lok Sabha seats in the state," Patel, who is also NCP general secretary, said.

Talks on seat-sharing with the Congress have already started and it is expected to be finalised in next couple of days, Patel said.

Earlier on, union textile minister Shankersinh Vaghela and minister of state for petroleum and natural resources, Dinsha Patel, attended the function. However, chief minister Narendra Modi was not present even though he was an invitee. Patel said that Modi had talked to him and said that he would not be able to attend the function as he was in the assembly.

The state-of-the-art terminal building, which is coming up after years of demand by the people, will be completed in 18 months. This has been undertaken under the 35 non-metro airport development programmes initiated by Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The new integrated terminal building will have an area of 18,120 sq m and will be a glass and steel structure having modern passenger-friendly facilities such as central air conditioning system, inline X-ray baggage inspection system integrated with the baggage conveyor system, escalators, public address system, flight information display system (FIDS), CCTV for surveillance, check in counters with common use terminal equipment (CUTE), car parking, etc. The integrated terminal building will have peak hour passenger handling capacity of 700 passengers and annual handling capacity of 7.30 lakhs.

Addressing the audience, Patel said: "The construction of the new terminal will be completed in 18 months. Soon after its opening, international services will be launched. The ministry also aims to start cargo service at Vadodara. We urge the state government to allot about 25 acres of land for the other facilities."

DNA Correspondent/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication