As another session of Parliament draws to a close, the growing pile of unfulfilled assurances made on the floor of the Rajya Sabha has once again drawn attention to the fiscal and administrative costs borne by the public exchequer, with a parliamentary watchdog recording 699 promises by Union ministers that remain pending across 53 ministries.
The Parliamentary Committee on Government Assurances in the Rajya Sabha, which tracks undertakings made by ministers and assesses whether they have been implemented, has found that road transport, railways and civil aviation together account for the highest number of pending assurances.
The situation where this has been found includes prolonged project delays, cost escalations and repeated administrative extensions that cumulatively strain public finances. While assurances are meant to be fulfilled within three months unless extensions are granted, the committee’s latest report shows that 40 promises have been pending for over a decade.
One such long-pending assurance relates to the revival of student elections at Banaras Hindu University, where in December 2014, then human resource development minister Smriti Irani had stated that a university committee was examining the viability of elections, yet a detailed implementation report submitted by the education ministry in 2024 merely outlined procedural developments without clarifying whether elections could be held, prompting the committee to treat the assurance as only partly fulfilled.
Another decade-old case concerns the Indian National Defence University, where former defence minister Manohar Parrikar had informed Parliament in 2015 that cost revisions were under consideration despite the project having received in-principle approval in 2010, and with delays continuing, the committee has refused the defence ministry’s request to drop the assurance, citing the financial and strategic implications of prolonged indecision.
Promises tied to politically sensitive issues have also remained unresolved, including the restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, where home minister Amit Shah had indicated in 2019 that statehood would follow an improvement in the situation, and with the home ministry later reiterating that the matter would be addressed at an appropriate time, the committee has again recorded the assurance as only partly met.
Infrastructure and welfare-related assurances have similarly lagged, with ministers such as G Kishan Reddy, Smriti Irani and Nityanand Rai named in cases involving delayed impact studies, discontinued minority schemes under review, and incomplete housing projects for migrant workers in Kashmir, all of which involve significant budgetary allocations that continue to be spent without clear outcomes.
The committee’s scrutiny of 247 implementation reports submitted between July 2024 and June 2025 shows that while 164 assurances were eventually fulfilled, many took years beyond their original timelines, thereby increasing costs through inflation, revised contracts and administrative overheads.