Krishi Udan handles over a lakh tonnes of perishable cargo this year so far

NEW DELHI, Apr 5 (The CONNECT) – Krishi Udan Scheme was launched in August, 2020 on international and national routes to assist farmers in transporting agricultural products and to improve their value realization, now covers 53 airports in the country.

Krishi Udan 2.0 was announced in October, 2021 enhancing the existing provisions, mainly focusing on transporting perishable food products from the hilly areas, North-Eastern States and tribal areas. Primarily the scheme was focusing on 25 airports of North-Eastern Region, Hilly and Tribal region namely Agartala, Agatti, Barapani, Dehradun, Dibrugarh, Dimapur, Gaggal, Imphal, Jammu, Jorhat, Kullu (Bhuntar), Leh, Lengpui, Lilabari, Pakyong, Pantnagar, Pithoragarh, Port Blair, Raipur, Ranchi, Rupsi, Shimla, Silchar, Srinagar and Tezu.

Subsequently, other 28 AAI airports, namely, Adampur (Jalandhar), Agra, Amritsar, Bagdogra, Bareilly, Bhuj, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Goa, Gorakhpur, Hindon, Indore, Jaisalmer, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Kanpur (Chakeri), Kolkata, Nasik, Pathankot, Patna, Prayagraj, Pune, Rajkot, Tezpur, Trichy, Trivandrum, Varanasi and Visakhapatnam have been included in the scheme.

Krishi Udan is a convergence scheme where eight Ministries and Departments - Ministry of Civil Aviation, Department of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Department of Commerce, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) would leverage their existing schemes to strengthen the logistics for transportation of Agri-produce. There is no budgetary allocation for the Scheme.

Under the Scheme, facilitating and incentivizing movement of Agri-produce by air transportation by full waiver of Landing, Parking, Terminal Navigational Landing Charges (TNLC), and Route Navigation Facility Charges (RNFC) for Indian freighters and Passenger to Cargo (P2C) at selected Airports of Airports Authority of India, primarily around 25 airports focusing on NER, Hilly and Tribal region and 28 airports at other areas have been included.

A total of 1,08,479  Tonne perishable cargo (International + Domestic) was handled in Financial Year 2021-22 (till 28 Feb., 2022) in comparison to 84, 042 Metric Tonne handled in Financial Year 2020-21 at AAI airports. Krishi Udan is an ongoing Scheme and  is reviewed from time to time in consultation with stakeholders.

This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Gen. (Dr) V. K. Singh (Retd) in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha yesterday.