Monitor News Desk
New Delhi, April 04: Srinagar and Jammu airports have been included in the Centre’s Krishi Udan Scheme to transport perishable agricultural products.
Launched in August 2020 the scheme assists farmers in transporting agricultural products so that it improves their value realization.
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 focused on 25 airports of the 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/Departments including the 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 Metric 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. V. K. Singh (Retd) in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.
