Citing a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that said that the Centre’s flagship UDAN scheme did not not work on 93% of the routes, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday said that the common people only got “lies and jumlas [empty rhetoric]” from the Narendra Modi government.
The UDAN scheme – an acronym for Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (A common man takes flight) – was launched in October 2016 to provide air connectivity to tier-2 and tier-3 cities and towns at an affordable cost. In a post on social media platform X, Mr. Kharge said that the Modi government’s promise of enabling the common people to travel by air has not been fulfilled “just like all their promises”.
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“We are not saying this, the CAG Report is saying this! The scheme (UDAN) did not work on 93 per cent of the routes. Even independent audit of airlines was not done. The much publicised helicopter services also remained stalled. Didn’t get ‘UDAN’ (flight), just talk of lies and jumlas! India will not forgive such an incompetent government now!” the Congress president said.
In the past couple of days, the Congress has stepped up its attack on the Modi government over CAG reports that have pointed out the misuse of funds and cost escalation of public infrastructure projects.
Expressway project
Commenting on the cost escalation of the Dwarka Expressway, former Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari had also questioned the media on its “silence” about the reports.
“The same media that used to have paroxysms of apoplectic fits with breathless anchors on the verge of bursting a vein when former C&G Vinod Rai would release his dubious reports based upon fictional presumptive losses, today chooses to bury its collective head in the sands of ignominy when the C&G says that a road that should have been built at ₹18 crore a kilometre was built at ₹250 crore a kilometre. Where is anger, outrage, consternation, pulpit thumping fury? Is the silence wilful, fear or inducement driven?” Mr. Tewari asked on social media.
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate too had questioned the mainstream media for not seeking answers from the Modi government on issues of corruption unlike during “the UPA era where every CAG report had become the subject matter of daily prime time TV debates”.
