NEW DELHI: Allahabad nee Prayagraj will get a new civil “airport complex” on Sunday when Prime Minister Modi inaugurates the terminal and other infra created by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) in a record time of 11 months. A new terminal and four additional aircraft parking bays have been built at the Bamrauli Airport at a cost of Rs 164 crore. This terminal can handle upto 300 passengers in an hour and allows Allahabad to have more commercial flights just ahead of the Kumbh Mela that starts mid-January.A team of top Union aviation ministry officials had last year gone to meet UP CM Yogi Adityanath to discuss how to augment state’s airport infra. During discussions, the CM wondered if AAI could augment Allahabad’s airport infra in time for the Kumb Mela.“The time remaining was very less, just over 11 months. We decided to take this project as a challenge. It was not just building a new civil airport terminal but other infra was also required to be added like more aircraft parking bays. That project is now complete and will be inaugurated on Sunday,” AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said.Under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik-II (UDAN) of regional connectivity scheme (RCS) where fares for flights are capped at Rs 2,500 per hour, AAI has awarded several routes linking Allahabad to 13 other cities. “Routes connecting Allahabad to Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun Gorakhpur, Indore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Pune and Raipur have been awarded. Out of these, flights (between Allahabad) and Lucknow, Patna, Nagpur and Indore have commenced. A non-RCS flight from Delhi to Allahabad has been operated by Alliance Air for a long time,” said Mohapatra.The new terminal has been built in 50 acres of land that was given by the state government. Compared to the old terminal which could handle a maximum of 50 passengers (25 arriving and 25 departing) in an hour, the new one has a peak hour capacity of 300 passengers.Since Allahabad, that has a bench of the High Court, is a major pilgrimage and a centre for learning, is witnessing tremendous demand for more air connectivity, AAI had decided to upgrade the terminal project by building more more aircraft parking bays that were not planned earlier in the original scope of work for the airport. Earlier only one parking bay was planned that allowed only one plane to be parked at a time, but AAI upped that to four that can park upto Airbus A20 or Boeing 737 size planes. Three more parking bays are being built.Prayagraj has an Indian Air Force station which used to have a civil terminal of the size of a bungalow. “It must have been someone’s house earlier. Two rooms of that bungalow serve as the arrival and departure hall,” said the chairman.AAI has gone green while augmenting the infra at Allahabad, The new terminal has used fly ash bricks; has double insulated roof; does water harvesting and has a sewage treatment plant with treated water going to be used for horticulture.Allahabad’s Bamrauli Airport is a defence airfield with a civil enclave to allow commercial passenger flights.