UDAN scheme yet to take off fully

The government's regional connectivity scheme UDAN has witnessed a slow progress of implementation, as not even 50 per cent of the routes have been operationalised and the second wave of the pandemic, which started from mid of March 2021, may impact it further going forward, according to a report.

Rating agency ICRA in its report on Tuesday said that there is likely to be a further delay of two years in achieving the target of operationalising as many as 100 unserved and underserved airports and starting at least 1,000 RCS routes by 2024. Aimed at enhancing regional connectivity through fiscal support and infrastructure development, the maiden flight under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Shimla for Delhi on April 27, 2017.

As on May 31, only 47 per cent of total routes and 39 per cent of airports (unserved and underserved) have been operationalised under UDAN, according to ICRA. The number of new RCS routes which started operations increased at a healthy pace and stood at 102 and 120 routes in FY2019 and FY2020 respectively, but have declined to 77 new routes in FY2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, ICRA said. Also, during FY2018 – FY2021, a total of Rs 3,350 crore have been incurred by the central government towards the UDAN scheme and the budgeted outlay for FY2022 is Rs 1,130 crore, according to ICRA.

The Civil Aviation Ministry has set a target of operationalising as many as 1,00 unserved and underserved airports and starting at least 1,000 RCS routes by 2024, ICRA said, adding that of these, as many as 52 unserved and underserved airports and 357 routes are operationalised as on May 31. The ratings agency also said that to improvise the RCS network and achieve its target, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has launched UDAN 4.1 as a special bidding round under UDAN 4.0 in March this year to award 392 routes. AAI is the implementing agency for UDAN.

"The slow progress of UDAN implementation is attributable to delayed upgradation of infrastructure and readiness of airports, due to lack of adequate right of way (including insufficient runway lengths) at some of the RCS airports and delays in securing necessary regulatory approvals," said Shubham Jain, SVP and Group Head for Corporate Ratings at ICRA. He further said that "low demand on few routes awarded, adverse and unpredictable weather conditions leads to inconsistent operations and have also resulted in closure of operations by some airlines in a few cases." Jain also noted that the second wave of the pandemic, which started from mid of March 2021 would further impact the UDAN scheme going forward with aviation being one of the worst-hit infrastructure sectors. "The award and implementation of UDAN 4.1 may get delayed significantly due to the second wave of the pandemic in India and its effect on the Indian aviation industry.