The announcement of the Defence ministry on Saturday that the next edition of Aero India, Asia’s largest aerospace exhibition, will be held in its traditional venue of Bangalore from February 20 to 24 next year.

Last month, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had made a request to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to choose Lucknow as the venue for Aero India, triggering angry reactions from various political parties in Karnataka. The Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who represents Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha had to face a lot of flak for not being able to protect the state’s interests.

There was speculation that the venue for the mega event may be shifted after the defence ministry indicated that it was examining requests from a number of states including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to host the 12th edition of Aero India.

”The government has decided to hold Aero India 2019 in Bangalore from February 20-24, 2019,” the ministry statement said. Since its inception in 1996, Bangalore has  hosted the event on a massive scale and is known to be successful at it.

The ministry statement said that a number of global defence majors and big investors in the aerospace industry will participate in the five-day event along with leading think-tanks from across the world.

”Besides giving a fillip to the domestic aviation industry, it would further the cause of Make in India,” the ministry said in a statement.

In his request to host Aero India near Lucknow, Adityanath had on August 11 said such a move would serve as a boost to the proposed defence corridor in Uttar Pradesh.

Days later Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insisting that Bangalore would be the “best choice” for the event. Several MP’s from Karnataka had also taken up the case for retaining it in Bengaluru.

”Bangalore being the hub for defence and aviation majors of the country, is certainly the most suitable place to conduct the show,” he had said in the letter.

In the budget for 2018-19, the government announced the setting up two defence corridors, one in Tamil Nadu and other in Uttar Pardesh, to promote defence manufacturing. However with Bengaluru once again hosting the show, the defence ministry may have to rush up on the calendar to make arrangements for the international scale Aviation event Aero India. This however is not the first time that the Modi government has made efforts to take the show to a different destination. Earlier too Manohar Parrikar had made efforts to move the event to Goa in 2016.