We have achieved cumulative installed renewable energy capacity of 76.87 GW as on February, 2019 and are on track to achieve our goal of 175 GW by 2022… Achieve 175 GW of renewable energy.

The 2019 Sankalp Patra states a position and a forecast: "We have achieved cumulative installed renewable energy capacity of 76.87 GW as on February, 2019 and are on track to achieve our goal of 175 GW by 2022." Among its numbered targets it repeats the figure — "Achieve 175 GW of renewable energy."

Assessing 175 GW as a whole would require an audit of the entire renewable sector, which does not exist. What does exist is a CAG performance audit of the single programme meant to deliver the largest identifiable block of it — Solar Parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects, 40,000 MW of it, tabled on 12 August 2025 and covering to March 2024.

That audit is useful here in both directions. It records where India beat its targets: "As against the target of 57,000 MW under Ground Mounted Solar projects by 2021-22, India has achieved 64,415 MW capacity as on March 2024", and 2,958 MW against a 2,000 MW off-grid target. On the broad build-out, the manifesto's confidence was not misplaced.

The solar parks programme is the exception, and it is a large one. "As of March 2024, 58 Solar Parks were allocated across 13 States, with a total capacity of 40,000 MW of which only 28.60 per cent (11,491 MW) of the targeted capacity had been installed." The deadline had been moved three times, from 2019 to 2026. Phase I, allocated between 2014 and 2017 for 12,761 MW across 18 parks, had 12 parks established by March 2024; Phase II, 27 parks and 25,600 MW allocated between 2017 and 2022, had two complete and three partly built.

The audit's diagnosis is about how the projects were started rather than how they were run. In-principle approvals were given "without conducting feasibility studies and techno-economic viability assessment"; detailed project reports were revised repeatedly because they "were not realistic in terms of availability of land, layout and technology"; and land delays "were not realistically anticipated and proactively resolved." When Phase II relaxed the timeline from 18 to 24 months after Phase I overran, it overran too, "as the underlying issues remained unresolved."

Money followed the shortfall rather than causing it. Against a targeted ₹8,100 crore, the ministry had released ₹3,231.76 crore — 40 per cent — by March 2024, which the audit reads as "an indicator of the slow pace of implementation". And the country's basic planning document for solar is a decade old: the Solar Potential Map of India "was last prepared in 2014" and has not been revised, though panel efficiency has since risen to 19-22 per cent and the wasteland atlas was updated in 2019.

The audit also names what worked, which matters for a fair reading. In Karnataka, landowners in Pavagada taluk "voluntarily expressed their willingness to lease out about 11,000 acres" and that park "was completed as envisaged"; Gujarat built Raghanesda on government wasteland and it "is running at full capacity of 700 MW"; Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka completed all their Phase I parks, if late.

India's renewable capacity grew substantially and its ground-mounted solar target was exceeded, so the manifesto's premise was broadly sound. The programme carrying 40,000 MW of it delivered a bit over a quarter, and the audit closes on the cost of that: because only 28 per cent of the capacity exists, "the anticipated annual CO2 abatement did not fully materialise." Our verdict is lacks context.