Bhopal: In a bid to attract both— the investors and tourists — the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to allow private operators to run commercial flights between various cities in the state.

In the first phase of the project, Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Gwalior and Satna cities will be linked through this service.

“ We will constitute a separate Aviation cell in Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation. They will make arrangements for seat reservation and compensate VAT for fuel for aircrafts,” government spokesperson and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Narrotam Mishra said.

Government is going to float an open tender in order to select the private operator for the service. Government has identified different routes for the service which include Indore-Bhopal-Jabalpur-Satna-Jabalpur- Bhopal-Indore, Indore-Bhopal- Gwalior-Satna- Gwalior-Bhopal- Indore and Gwalior-Jabalpur- Gwalior.

The private operators will have to provide minimum 9-seater planes and will be free to fix charges for different sectors. However, they will have to keep some seats reserved for the state government, which will be used by the government officials for their travel, an official statement said.

If the seat reserved remains vacant, then the operator will be free to sell the ticket to anyone. In case they fail to sell the ticket, then the government will be liable to pay for it. The government is going to make weekly payments to the operators for those vacant seats, it added.

If the operator uses state government owned airstrips then they have to bear the cost of fire brigade and ambulance used and the state government will only provide security to them.