NEW DELHI – You could soon take a seaplane from the bank of the Yamuna River to Ayodhya or from Mumbai to Shirdi for a pilgrimage.
the Sagarmala Development Company (SDCL), under the Ministry of Navigation and Inland Waterways, issued an Expression of Interest (EoI) on Saturday for seaplane services on routes such as Delhi to Ayodhya, Tehri, Srinagar (Uttarakhand) and Chandigarh; Mumbai to Shirdi, Lonavala and Ganpatipule; Surat to Dwarka, Mandvi and Kandla; and within the Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep archipelagos.
Interested players can also propose other routes that they consider viable. The routes under this Sagarmala Seaplane Service (SSPS) can be operated under the government subsidized scheme “Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN)”.
The sources said that some actors in this sector have carried out evaluations of tourist interest and the EoI aims to measure the interest of different companies. “We had also explored the possibility of running such a service between Varanasi and Ayodhya. Although there is currently no infrastructure to run such a service, it can be set up in a short time. We are only exploring the possibilities,” said a source. .
According to the EoI, the government has sought a response from interested entities to form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) with SDCL to carry out the joint development and operation of SSPS.
The inclusion of seaplane services to the islands came after Prime Minister Modi asked the shipping ministry to explore the developing islands as independent cities for tourism, TOI reported on Nov. 29. and Statue of Unity in Gujarat.
.
