More than seven decades after independence and three decades after India's economic liberalisation, the Narendra Modi government on Sunday took great pride to announce the completion of electrification of all villages in the country.
With electricity reaching Manipur’s Leisang on Saturday evening, the Central government achieved its target 12 days ahead of the deadline set by Prime Minister Modi.
"28th April 2018 will be remembered as a historic day in the development journey of India," an excited Modi took to micro-blogging site Twitter to announce.
"Yesterday, we fulfilled a commitment due to which the lives of several Indians will be transformed forever! I am delighted that every single village of India now has access to electricity," he added.
As many as 18,452 villages were without electricity when the BJP-led government came to power in May 2014. Now, all of the country's 5,97,464 census villages have been electrified.
Electrified means the village is connected to power grid. It essentially does not mean that all its habitats have access to electricity.
According to government definition, a village is considered electrified if it has the basic electrical infrastructure and 10 per cent of its households and public places have power.
"Leisang village in Manipur, like the thousands of other villages across India has been powered and empowered! This news will make every Indian proud and delighted," Modi tweeted.
Modi had in his Independence Day speech in 2015, spoken of electrifying all villages within 1,000 days.
The task, however, took 988 days to complete as an average of 16 and a half villages were electrified every day.
"I salute the efforts of all those who worked tirelessly on the ground, including the team of officials, the technical staff and all others, to make this dream of a #PowerfulIndia a reality. Their efforts today will help generations of Indians in the coming years," Modi said in another tweet.
When the BJP-led government launched its version of the village electrification scheme -- the Rs 76,000-crore Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) --- there were an estimated 18,452 unelectrified villages. An additional 1,275 villages were added to the list subsequently.
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According to official estimates, about 3.14 crore rural households, or 17 per cent of total 17.99 crore rural households, still do not have any access to electricity. The highest number of them are in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand and Odisha.
To take electricity to all households by end 2018, the government has launched the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana or the Saubhagya scheme. Of the Rs 16,320 crore needed for the task, Rs 12,320 crore has already been provided in the Union Budget.
(With inputs from agencies)
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