Jharsuguda among 58 Airports Covered under Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0

New Delhi: As many as 58 airports including Odisha’s Jharsuguda airport have been covered under Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0.

The Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0 was announced on October 27, 2021 enhancing the existing provisions, mainly focusing on transporting perishable food products from the hilly areas, North-Eastern States and tribal areas.

For facilitating and incentivising the movement of agri-produce by air transportation, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) provides full waiver of Landing, Parking, Terminal Navigational Landing Charges (TNLC) and Route Navigation Facility Charges (RNFC) for Indian freighters and P2C (Passenger-to-Cargo) Aircraft.

The scheme primarily covers around 25 airports focusing on North Eastern, Hilly and Tribal region besides 28 airports in other regions/areas. After evaluation of Krishi Udan 2.0, five more airports have been included making it to total 58 airports.

Krishi Udan Scheme is a convergence scheme where eight Ministries/Departments namely 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 would leverage their existing schemes to strengthen the logistics for transportation of Agri-produce. There is no specific budget allocation under Krishi Udan Scheme.;

The main objective of the Krishi Udan Scheme 2.0 is to increase share of air carriage in the modal mix for transportation of Agri-produce, which includes horticulture, fishery, livestock and processed products. The scheme assists farmers in transporting agriculture products so that it improves their value realisation.

Initially 53 Airports were covered in the pilot project for 06 months. Thereafter, during the review, 05 more Airports were added thus total covered are 58 Airports namely, Adampur, Agartala, Agatti, Agra, Amritsar, Bagdogra, Bareli, Bhuj, Bhuntar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Dibrugarh, Dimapur, Gaggal, Goa, Gorakhpur, Hindon, Imphal, Indore, Jaisalmer, Jammu, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Jorhat, Kanpur, Kolkata, Leh, Lengpui, Lilabari, Nashik, Pakyong, Pantnagar, Pathankot, Patna, Pithoragarh, Port-Blair, Prayagraj, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot, Ranchi, Rupsi, Shillong, Shimla, Silchar, Srinagar, Tezpur, Tezu, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirappalli, Varanasi, Visakhapatnam, Belagavi, Bhopal, Darbhanga, Jabalpur and Jharsuguda.

Krishi Udan scheme is to provide air transportation and logistics support for perishable agri-produce as per the need. Leveraging the existing schemes of the 8 Ministries as mentioned above, the producers can utilise the services available at 58 airports listed under the scheme considering the demand.

The Scheme aims to ensure seamless, cost-effective, time bound, air transportation and associated logistics for all Agri-produce originating especially from North-East, hilly and tribal regions of the country. Few successful examples are air transportation of ‘King Chillies, Burmese Grapes & Assamese Lemon’ from Gauwahati, ‘Jackfruit’ from Tripura and ‘Litchi’ from Darbhanga.

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