Noida International Airport will bring in investment up to Rs 35,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh and the greenfield project will have one lakh job opportunities, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday. Adityanath said this as he personally reviewed preparation works for the foundation laying ceremony of the airport in Jewar, Gautam Buddh Nagar to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

He said the Noida International Airport (NIA) will immensely benefit the state particularly its western parts and those which fall in the national capital region like Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Hapur. In the first phase, an investment of over Rs 10,000 crore is expected in this area initially. The whole airport will eventually attract investment worth around Rs 34,000 crore to Rs 35,000 crore and more than one lakh people will get jobs here, Adityanath said.

Along with this, there will be several opportunities like MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) for aircraft at the airport, he said. This airport's construction will be completed and it will go functional in 2024, becoming the fifth international airport of Uttar Pradesh. We already have international airports in Lucknow and Varanasi, the chief minister said.

Prime Minister Modi had recently inaugurated an international airport at Kushinagar while we have already been working on another international airport in Ayodhya, he said. Adityanath said the Noida International greenfield airport will be the first airport in India which will be free of any kind of pollution and it will not only be India's but Asia's biggest airport.

The chief minister also took a dig at previous non-BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh. There has been a demand for the airport for last 30-35 years or a similar project in the area but a political will power which was required to realise this demand had been lacking, he said.

We are grateful to PM Modi and the Centre who guided us in establishing the biggest airport of Asia in Jewar area of Uttar Pradesh since our government came to power in the state in 2017, he added. Adityanath said a comprehensive plan is underway to integrate development and work opportunities in the region with this airport.

A film city is also being developed near the airport. The work on its planning is in the final stages and the film city is likely to attract major investments, he said. "Likewise, an important node of the defence manufacturing corridor lies in Aligarh which will also be close to the airport in Jewar, he noted.

The chief minister said a medical device park and several other infrastructure projects of the state government are underway in the region. He said only two airports were functional in Uttar Pradesh till 2017 but now, with the Centre's regional connectivity scheme also coming into play, there are nine functional airports in the state.

Till 2017, our airports had connectivity only on 25 routes. Today, we have already linked the state with more than 80 destinations, he said. Adityanath said the new airports are being planned in areas where no one could have imagined building one, like in the Vindhya region near Sonbhadra, Chitrakoot, Lalitpur, and in Azamgarh and Shravasti in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Airport planning works are in final stages in places like Aligarh, Saharanpur, Moradabad and Meerut, he added. All those places where previously people could not imagine air connectivity are now being connected with flights. This has happened in the last four to five years and in an expeditious, transparent manner, he said.

Taking a jibe at opposition parties, Adityanath said the grand foundation laying ceremony was also required to highlight the timeline of development projects in the state to some people who claim they had also planned to build projects but could not do it.