New Delhi, Mar 2: The elite Special Protection Group (SPG), guarding the Prime Minister and certain other VVIPs, will soon have an aircraft of its own to meet professional requirements.

The 3000-strong force has been pressing for an aircraft for long in order to meet its needs for carrying out security-related operations ahead of a VVIP visit.

Keeping this in mind, the budgetary proposal of the elite protection group accounts for an increase of 45% in the next fiscal. This is the highest-ever increase in the budgetary allocation for the force.

Earlier in 1997-98, it was Finance Minister P Chidambaram who had proposed an increase of 40% hike in SPG's budget.

The SPG, which guards Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his immediate family members, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her children, and former Prime Ministers, has already started looking for an aircraft in Europe and certain other markets to allow it to carry out Advance Security Liaison (ASL) teams ahead of a VVIP visit, official sources said.

The SPG, which was earlier known as Special Protection Unit, used to take the aircraft from Aviation Research Centre (ARC) of Research and Analysis Wing but has been facing some problems of late.

The budgetary proposals for SPG, which has been bringing in modern equipment, for this fiscal has been pegged at Rs 170.79 crore as against Rs 117 crore for the previous year.