First, one needs to carefully listen to what exactly PM Modi said during the inaugural event of the Paykong airport. The Prime Minister in his speech said:

“Ye airport khul ne ke baad poore Hindustan mein

100 airport kaam karne lag gaye hein”

He was referring to the fact that now a hundred airports have become available for service to the public because of regular flights by scheduled airlines.

Even in the PMO India (@PMOIndia) tweet, the claim was-

“आज हमारे 100 एयरपोर्ट चालू हो गए हैं,

इसमें से 35 एयरपोर्ट बीते 4 वर्षों में जुड़े हैं।”

It can be roughly translated as, “today we are having 100 airports that are functional. Out of these, 35 have been connected in the last four years.’

While it is true that at the beginning of 2014, there were 94 ‘operational’ airports. But, that only meant that the airport was ready to receive flights, even if it was only for chartered flights or private flights. Out of these 94 operational airports, only 67 airports were connected by regular flights of scheduled airlines, thus benefiting the general public.

Evidently, not all these airports were benefiting the general public because the scheduled airlines had not agreed to start the flights to some of these ‘operational’ airports. As a result, such airports were handling only occasional chartered flights or private flights.

Since 2014, the number of airports connected with regular flights of scheduled airlines has gone up from 67 to 100 airports.

Ministry of Civil Aviation took to twitter to set the facts straight.