We shall modernize existing and operational Airports, and build new ones especially connecting smaller towns and all tourism circuits.

The 2014 manifesto's line on aviation is one sentence: "We shall modernize existing and operational Airports, and build new ones especially connecting smaller towns and all tourism circuits." It names no number and sets no date, so the test has to be whether smaller towns actually got flights.

A scheme was built to do precisely that. The National Civil Aviation Policy of June 2016 created a Regional Connectivity Scheme, and in October 2016 the Ministry of Civil Aviation launched it as UDAN — Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik. Its method was to pay airlines the gap between the cost of flying a thin route and what they could earn on it, cap the fare, and let the airlines themselves nominate which routes to try.

On the promise's own terms it worked, for a while and for a lot of people. The CAG's compliance audit, tabled on 10 August 2023, opens its findings by calling the scheme "a good initiative for increasing air connectivity as a faster, safer and affordable option of travel for common people, with eco-multiplier effect", and records that passengers on scheme routes rose "from 2.63 lakh in 2017-18 to 24.97 lakh in 2022-23".

The durability is the problem. "Upto UDAN-3, 52 per cent (403 out of 774 routes) of the awarded routes could not commence operations." Of the 371 that did start, 112 lasted the full three-year concession period. And of those 112, "only 54 routes (i.e., 7 per cent of the awarded routes) connecting 17 RCS Airports could sustain the operations beyond the concession period of three years, as of March 2023." The scheme's stated aim was connectivity that would not depend on subsidy in perpetuity; after seven years, seven per cent of what was awarded had reached that point.

The airports tell a similar story, and this is the half of the promise about building. "Out of the 116 airports/ heliports/ water aerodromes where expenditure was incurred, operations commenced at only 71." At 83 of them operations either never started or were later stopped — "even after incurring an expenditure of ₹1,089 crore." On heliports specifically, the audit found no selection exercise at all: "There was no exercise carried out by MoCA/ AAI to identify eligible heliports on the basis of its potential", and most of those taken up on operators' own proposals "either remained un-utilised/under-utilised or RCS operations from such heliports were discontinued subsequently."

Two findings concern the money. Viability gap funding was paid out on the airlines' own word: the advisory board's decision "to accept VGF claims by AAI on self-certification basis resulted in non-compliance to various provisions of the scheme", with "excess disbursement of VGF, violation of RCS fare cap" following from it. And the levy that pays for all this — collected from passengers on every domestic departure — was never brought under rules: "MoCA did not frame any rules to regulate the collection and remittance mechanism of Regional Air Connectivity Fund levy", and the fund trust's accounts "were also not submitted for CAG audit" since inception. On helicopter routes, both the fare cap and the subsidy were computed on the flight time written in the award letter rather than the time actually flown, so passengers paid more and the exchequer paid more.

Smaller towns did get flights, and 25 lakh journeys a year is not a rounding error. But the manifesto promised connections, and a connection that lapses when the subsidy stops is a weaker thing than one that lasts. Our verdict is lacks context: the passenger numbers are real, and so is the finding that seven per cent of awarded routes were still flying on their own.