Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, R K Singh, has his task cut out — light the country’s households and ensure 24x7 electricity at affordable price. Not easy for sure, but Singh is confident. In a quick chat with BusinessLine, Singh shares where he gets his confidence from as it also has a direct bearing on the vote bank. Excerpts:

The target set by the government to electrify every household seems ambitious given the federal structure we have. The key to success of all the schemes being launched will be last mile connectivity. How does your latest offering Saubhagya work?

We have been systematic about it. We first said that we will give you money for strengthening the distribution in the rural area and then for strengthening the distribution in the urban area under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna (DDUGJY) and under the Integrated Power Distribution Scheme. Under DDUGJY, we have an outlay of ₹43,000 crore and apart from that, the ongoing RE scheme has been subsumed and the total adds up to about ₹70,000-odd crore. Under IPDS we have a scheme for about ₹33,000 crore. Basically, we started giving money to strengthen distribution. Then we decided that we must connect every village. When we started this, we were told that there are 18,452 villages which are not connected with electricity. We managed to connect most, only 282 remained. During the course of implementation, we came across 2,000 odd villages not included by the States. They were included later and we have electrified them also except maybe one or two hundred. The Prime Minister had said 1,000 days — May 16, 2018 — but we will finish it by April 30.

So Saubhagya was born…

Earlier, getting an electricity connection would require one to make multiple rounds of government offices and even pay bribes. It was unimaginable for the poor to get an electricity connection before Saubhagya.

We are pushing the States that were lagging behind. For example, the scheme was launched in October 2017, but the average number of connections disbursed is just 760 per day in Odisha, whereas to achieve the target before March 31, 2019, they should be doing 8,700 houses per day. At this rate, all the houses in the rest of the country will get connected and Odisha will be the only State left out.

The all-India rate has been 22,000 houses per day. And this too is unsatisfactory and in order to achieve the target, I have to do at least 1 lakh per day.

We have adopted a transparent method by holding camps in every village. We are insisting on transparency and promotion so that corruption in disbursing electricity connections is eliminated.

Do you at any time feel constrained because this is a state subject?

This is not a State subject, it is a concurrent one. This means that both State and Centre have the power to make laws, but when the Centre makes one, it prevails.

Does SECC 2011 data, which forms a basis of identifying the numbers, constrain you?

The SECC 2011 data is not a constraint because I am connecting every household. Whether it is 3.71 crore or 4 crore, it is not relevant. I will connect every household, however many there are. Ghaziabad has recently been declared 100 per cent electrified.

Is availability of power also an issue?

Availability is not an issue, today if you want to buy power, it is there in the grid.

You just Just need to have the money to buy. The peak demand which I see is around 165 GW. My installed capacity is 334 GW. So availability is not a problem, nor is transmission.

Talking of electricity in each household, there are certain places where there is no grid connectivity. What is the solution there?

We are giving off grid with battery.

While the initial Saubhagya connections are free, what about the next step?

For that we have proposed pre-paid meters. It will work just like the pre-paid SIM cards. If the consumer wants to use power worth ₹200, he will recharge accordingly. The cost of pre-paid meters has come down to ₹1,100 and we expect it to come to below ₹1,000 in the subsequent bids.

How will Saubhagya be funded?

We have allocated ₹16,000 crore. The States have to bear a very little amount of 30 per cent, that too through a loan, so effectively we are giving 90 per cent.

How will Kusum scheme work?

Under Kusum, we have proposed for 17 lakh solar pumps. This is apart from the ₹15,000 crore we are giving for rural feeders. Right now the agricultural pumps in the rural areas in UP and Bihar are not connected to the grid. They are diesel and they are expensive.

The proposal before Cabinet is that the Centre will foot 30 per cent of the bill, the State will do the same, and 30 per cent will be a loan. The farmer has to give an upfront 10 per cent and then the instalments to the bank. The remaining 60 per cent is free, and then he gets power through solar, which is virtually free.

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