Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh will soon reach the number one spot on the domestic air circuit, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Saturday, as he along with several Union ministers addressed various sessions on Day 2 of the UP Global Investors Summit-2023 in Lucknow.
Speaking at the session “Civil Aviation in Uttar Pradesh: The Emerging Opportunities”, Scindia said the state is the most favourable destination for investment.
“Earlier, Uttar Pradesh had only two airports. At present, nine airports are operational in the state,” he said, adding that 10 more under-construction airports will soon become operational.
“In addition to this, the process to acquire land for two more airports has begun. Soon, Uttar Pradesh will have 21 airports,” Scindia said. “Uttar Pradesh will soon be at number one position in the domestic air circuit in the country.”
Scindia pointed out that the country’s aviation sector has been democratised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi by making air travel accessible to the common man.
“Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura have always shown a new path to India. Uttar Pradesh has always been and will continue to be a priority in the development of India,” he said on the second day of the three-day summit.
Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who chaired a session titled “Healthcare through the investors’ lens in post-Covid scenario”, called upon investors to join hands with the government in making India a manufacturing hub of medical equipment, urging them to realise the vision of PM Modi to turn India into a developed nation by 2047.
“This investors’ summit is taking place in UP when a decisive government is at the helm; there is the Modi government at the top and a double-engine government (a term used for the same party at the Centre and in the state) is working,” Mandaviya said. “Development and entrepreneurs will be encouraged.”
An ecosystem is being created to attract private investment in the pharmaceutical sector as well, he said. “We are the pharma hub of the world with 12,000 pharma sector industries,” Mandaviya said, while calling upon investors to take advantage of production-linked incentive scheme for promotion of domestic manufacturing.
“Work has been done to link health with development. Our government is pro-poor, pro-farmers, but industry-friendly,” he emphasised. “Wealth creation is an art and an ecosystem is required for the same. Nearly 65% of the devices in medical sector are imported. Why can’t we make them?”
Nitin Gadkari, the Union road transport and highways minister, said Uttar Pradesh has the highest potential to make India an “energy exporting” country in coming years.
“PM Modi’s vision is to turn India into an energy exporting country and the one state that has the biggest potential to help the country realise this vision is Uttar Pradesh,” Gadkari said while addressing a session titled ‘E-Mobility, Vehicle and Future Mobility’.
Emphasizing on the Centre’s push to increase the number of electric vehicles (EVs) in the country, Gadkari suggested that Uttar Pradesh should adopt London’s e-vehicle transport model to run luxury buses.
“The government aims to increase the number of EVs in the country to 20 million by 2030,” he said. “There will be 5 million government vehicles.”
At present, Uttar Pradesh has around 450,000 EVs, he said. “There are many startups coming up here in this field. If this is promoted, 10 lakh (1 million) people will get employment in UP,” he added.
Gadkari said the government has also taken the initiative to promote the production of green hydrogen from water and biomass, adding that Uttar Pradesh has a lot of potential in this regard.
Lauding UP government’s efforts to create more job opportunities through industrialization, Gadkari said: “Yogi Adityanath’s vision for making Uttar Pradesh a developed state is on the ‘appropriate highway’ and his car is running with such a speed that UP would soon get rid of poverty and unemployment.”
Addressing the session, CM Adityanath said the future belonged to e-mobility. He said the price of e-vehicles will come down as the demand will increase. “We have rolled out a new EV policy to promote environment-friendly e-vehicles in the state,” he added.
Speaking at a special session titled ‘IT, ITES & Data Centres: serving the world’, Union electronics and IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the digital progress of Uttar Pradesh in the last six years has been “unprecedented” and the state will soon become the growth engine of India.
“Under PM Modi, India has become a ‘producer, not a consumer’ of technology. 5G is an example of this,” he said. “And the way Uttar Pradesh is working in the IT sector, it is certain that the state will also become the growth engine of Producer India.”
Earlier, the minister said, IT sector investors preferred to invest in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, due to easy availability of technocrats and accessibility of land. “However, today, UP has emerged as one of the preferred investment destinations,” he added.