PM Modi’s Bengaluru Visit: To Inaugurate Airport’s New Terminal And Unveil 108 Feet Tall Kempegowda’s Statue

As part of his two-day journey to four Southern states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru on Friday (11 November) to inaugurate the Terminal 2 of Kempegowda International Airport.

Terminal 2 of Kempegowda International Airport at Bengaluru was built at a cost of around Rs 5,000 crore to double the passenger handling capacity of the airport to five to six crore passengers per annum, from the current capacity of about 2.5 crore.

During his Bengaluru visit, PM Modi will pay floral tributes to the statues of saint poet Sri Kanaka Dasa and also to Maharshi Valmiki at Vidhana Soudha and also flag off Vande Bharat Express and Bharat Gaurav Kashi Darshan Train at KSR railway station.

Conceptualized and sculpted by Ram V Sutar who also designed the Statue of Unity, 98 tonnes of bronze and 120 tonnes of steel have gone into making this statue.

The statue is on a 23-acre space at the airport, which will be a heritage park dedicated to showcasing Kempegowda. It was constructed at a cost of about Rs 85 crore.

Garden Terminal

American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) was selected for providing the design of the terminal. It chose a design for the terminal to reflect the ethos of Bengaluru as a garden city.

Billed as the garden terminal, it features trees, small gardens and ponds with local species of plants.

Passageways throughout the terminal will connect the passengers with nature. The ceiling at the entrance, check-in and security area will feature hanging planted bells. The new terminal will also feature a large indoor garden with rammed-earth walls and waterfalls, which will act as a gateway into the densely-landscaped retail area.

Among other things, T2 will include a multi-level car parking area and a lagoon for water recycling, apart from a multi-modal transport hub aligned to the main entrance, to which a metro station built by Namma Metro will offer connectivity to and from Bengaluru city.