The steel city’s hopes for air connectivity have soared with the East Singhbhum district administration sending a fresh proposal to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for developing the Dalbhumgarh airstrip in Ghatshila.

The district has promised to provide 240 acres for the project even though the AAI had sought 150 acres, deputy commissioner Amit Kumar revealed on Friday.

Kumar was addressing a news conference to list the achievements of the Raghubar Das government on its fourth anniversary. He said every department, especially health, education, infrastructure, energy, women empowerment and social security, had made significant progress during this period.

“Today, every house, however remote, boasts power supply. We have made this possible by implementing the Union government-sponsored Saubhagya Yojana, also known as Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana, which was launched in October 2017,” the deputy commissioner said.

Speaking on infrastructure, Kumar pointed out that when the Das government came to power four years ago, there were only 47km of two-way roads in the district. “Now, the district has 337km of two-way roads, most of them constructed in rural areas.”

Kumar listed 14 new bridges, including the Domuhani bridge in Sonari and Luabasa bridge in Govindpur, both over Subernarekha river, among other infrastructure achievements of the government.

On the cleanliness front, he said Mango and Jamshedpur were ranked 20th and 30th in Swachh Survekshan 2018, respectively, adding that the steel city was eyeing a berth among first 10 in the upcoming pan-India sanitation survey.