Union MoS for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha. Source: PTI

Union MoS for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha in an interview with the Indian Express said that the government is considering a proposal to rename all existing airports as well as future greenfield airports after the names of the respective cities and not after any personality. He said that the government is examining the proposal and a final decision will be taken in this regard soon. He said, “Matter is under investigation. We are evaluating how best to deal with that issue.”

According to sources, the government is yet to make any official release in the matter and the decision is being taken in the light of the inconvenience that is caused to the passengers and foreign tourists who are not familiar with the Indian personalities. The government will soon release a set of guidelines with regards to the renaming of airports after the respective cities where they are situated as soon as the proposal is cleared by the Union Cabinet. In addition to this sources also said that terminals of the airports can be named after personalities like the state governor, etc.

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Major Indian airports have been named after personalities, like the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport for Mumbai, Indira Gandhi International Airport for Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in and the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru.

The naming of airports is a tricky issue which can be easily be understood by the case of the Chandigarh International airport in which both which both Punjab and Haryana government own 24.5 per cent and the rest is under the state-owned Airports Authority of India. Both governments proposed different names in 2009 while Punjab government proposed ‘Shaheed-e-Azam Sardar Bhagat Singh International Airport, Mohali’, on the other hand the Haryana assembly, in 2009, passed a resolution that the new international airport be named Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, Chandigarh.