UDAN scheme is kind of far-off from its goal of growing 100 airports by 2024
Aiming to attach small cities with aerial routes to provide the quintessential widespread man or ‘aam admi’ the chance to undertake air journey, the federal government had unveiled the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) – UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) on October 21, 2016.
Beneath it,100 new airports in addition to heliports and water aerodromes are to be developed between 2019 and 2024 to assist the UDAN scheme. Along with this, 780 legitimate routes have been allotted to shortlisted airways after 4 rounds of bidding.
The Airports Authority of India has earmarked a sum of about Rs 25,000 crores for a interval of 5 years, i.e. from 2019 to 2024, throughout which the 100 new airports, heliports and water dromes might be made operational.
As of now although, out of 780 legitimate routes, solely 359 routes have been made operational, in accordance with official sources.
The replace on airports exhibits that whereas within the fiscal 12 months 2019-20, 9 airports had been developed, 14 airports had been developed until the third quarter of 2020-21 (i.e. December 2020), out of the proposed goal of 26 airports which had been to be developed throughout that fiscal.
Within the present fiscal (2021-22) and in 2022-23, 20 airports apiece are to be developed whereas 25 airports in 2023-24 are to be developed.
Due to this fact as per the knowledge supplied by the civil aviation ministry itself, until December 2020, solely 23 airports had been developed below the UDAN scheme, whilst it’s half method by means of its tenure interval.
So far as parameters adopted for figuring out airports below the UDAN scheme is anxious, the civil aviation ministry has mentioned that it’s a market pushed scheme, below which airways, primarily based on their evaluation of demand on specific routes, submit their proposals on the time of bidding.
An airport which is included within the awarded routes of RCS – UDAN and requires upgradation or growth for graduation of RCS operations, is developed below “revival of unserved and underserved airports” scheme.
The UDAN scheme is funded by means of a Rs 50 levy on flight tickets on main routes. The levy accounts for 80 % of the viability hole funding supplied to the airways, with the remaining 20 per cent supplied by state governments.