I haven't really been checking India awards, but broken fare awards have been present in other markets that I have been regularly checking (US, Europe, and Asia) for well over a year (and probably have been there since the new award system was put in place). I make mention of observing broken fare awards in this post from March, 2016. In that case, it was a DTW-SFO-LAX award for 18K with DTW-SFO at 14.5K and SFO-LAX at 3.5K.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26396166-post6.html