Samajwadi Party governments have spent almost Rs 100 crore during its different tenures on the construction of a modern airport at Saifai, the native village of the SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district, about 250 kilometres from here.
The revelation came in the reply to a query filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI) by a Lucknow based RTI activist Sanjay Sharma.
In his reply to the RTI query, Deepak Srivastava, the Principal Information Officer, Civil Aviation Directorate, said that Rs 9,249.42 lakh had been spent on the construction, beautification and renovation of Saifai airport so far.
On the query about the details of national and international flights arriving and departing from the airport, the official replied that there was no record available with the directorate in this regard.
The PIO also expressed his inability to furnish information about the earnings, if any, from the airport to the public exchequer from the airport saying that it was not available.
Citing Section 8 of RTI Act, Srivastava denied information related to UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s flight details landing at and taking-off from Safai airport.
Sharma plans to file a second appeal to seek the same information.
“It is sheer wastage of the public money. Such a huge amount of money was wasted only to satisfy the ego of the ruling family. The common citizens of the state have not in any way benefitted from the airport,” Sharma told Deccan Herald on Thursday.
He said that it was really surprising that so much of money was “wasted” on a project which was not only “useless” but had not brought anything in return.
Sharma said that he would also be sending a memorandum to Governor of UP to take action against IAS officials who approved the project of Safai airport as it was not viable at all.
Saifai also has a modern sports stadium and a super specialty hospital.
The SP organises ‘Saifai Festival’ every year in which many Bollywood personalities take part.