भारत के ऊर्जा मिश्रण के महत्वपूर्ण घटक के रूप में नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा स्रोतों को बल देना — राष्ट्रीय सौर मिशन का विस्तार और सुदृढ़ीकरण करना।

The 2014 manifesto's energy chapter makes two commitments on clean power, both short: "Give a thrust to renewable sources of energy as an important component of India's energy mix" and "Expand and strengthen the national solar mission." Neither carries a number, so the test of the promise has to be what the government itself then set out to do.

It set out to do a great deal. The National Solar Mission's target went from 20,000 MW to 1,00,000 MW in July 2015. Under the Paris Agreement India committed to 40 per cent of its electricity from clean sources by 2030 — a target the CAG's audit records as "having been achieved in 2021", nine years early, and since revised to 50 per cent. On the manifesto's own terms, the mission was expanded and strengthened.

The Solar Parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects scheme was the instrument meant to carry a large share of that. Its logic was straightforward: assemble land, transmission and clearances in one place so that developers do not each fight those battles alone. Phase I began in 2014 targeting 20,000 MW by 2018-19; Phase II followed in 2017 for another 20,000 MW.

The CAG's performance audit of that scheme, tabled in Parliament on 12 August 2025, is where the promise meets its accounting. "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 by then been pushed three times, from 2019 to 2026.

The audit is specific about why. 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"; land delays "were not realistically anticipated and proactively resolved". Phase II relaxed the timeline from 18 to 24 months after Phase I overran — and then overran too, "as the underlying issues remained unresolved". Of 27 Phase II parks totalling 25,600 MW, two were complete by March 2024.

Money followed the same curve. Against a targeted ₹8,100 crore, the ministry had released ₹3,231.76 crore — 40 per cent — by March 2024, which the audit reads not as thrift but as "an indicator of the slow pace of implementation". And the map the whole exercise depends on is a decade old: the Solar Potential Map of India "was last prepared in 2014" and has not been updated, though panel efficiency has since risen to 19-22 per cent and the wasteland atlas was revised in 2019.

The audit does not treat the scheme as a failure across the board, and neither should this fact-check. It names good practice at length: 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, albeit late.

India's solar build-out overall is bigger than this scheme — the same audit records 64,415 MW achieved on ground-mounted solar against a 57,000 MW target. The promise to expand the solar mission was kept. The specific programme built to deliver 40,000 MW of it delivered a bit over a quarter, and the audit's closing observation is the cost of that: because only 28 per cent of the capacity exists, "the anticipated annual CO2 abatement did not fully materialise."