The electrification of the country, particularly the eastern region, has been a top priority of the present government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday.
Hitting out at the earlier governments during an interaction with beneficiaries of the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana through video bridge, Modi said, “If the previous government had commenced the electrification of the remaining 18,000 villages in 2009, it could have been completed much earlier.”
Modi also said that eastern India, in particular, was ignored by the previous governments. “As of 2014, eastern India accounted for 14,542 of the 18,374 non-electrified villages in the country. A total of 5,790 were in the North-East alone,” he said.
This may be because these regions have fewer people and fewer parliamentary seats, so they were not considered politically relevant by the previous dispensation, he added.
Modi claimed that all non-electrified villages had been electrified since the NDA government came to power. His government not only focused on electrification but also reformed the distribution system across the country, he added.
Last village
An official statement said this is the 10th interaction in the series by the Prime Minister through video conference with the beneficiaries of various government schemes. The country’s last village to be electrified was Leisang in Manipur, which was electrified on April 28, 2018. Modi said that it was difficult to electrify the last 18,000 villages, as most of them were in remote hilly areas with poor connectivity.
Modi also said the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) was launched with the objective of electrifying each and every house in the country. More than 86 lakh households have been electrified through the scheme so far. The Saubhagya scheme is in mission mode and will ensure electricity connection to around 4 crore households, he added.