Wired for BharatNet: Centre to plug the broadband gap in Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh (UP), the most populous and politically crucial state in the country, has emerged as the centrepiece of the roll-out of two key schemes of the Narendra Modi government — the BharatNet project and the Saubhagya scheme.

The BharatNet project aims to connect 250,000 gram panchayats with broadband by March 2019. In the first phase, 100,000 gram panchayats will be connected by December this year, of which about 25 per cent are in UP alone.

The Saubhagya (Sahaj Bijli Ghar Yojana) scheme, which the Prime Minister (PM) launched on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Deendayal Upadhyaya on September 25, has the objective to make electricity accessible to every household by December 2018.

According to UP power ministry sources, as many as 21 million households, or half the target for the entire country, will be provided electricity in UP itself. “The PM gave poor families freedom from smoke through Ujjwala scheme, and Saubhagya will liberate poor households from darkness. It is a challenging task to make electricity accessible to all by December 2018, but we are committed to accomplish the task by utilising available resources,” said UP Power Minister Shrikant Sharma.

Officials at the Centre say a similar focus is being shown to implement the BharatNet scheme. “We are working closely with the state government to make sure UP gets completed on top priority,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told Business Standard.

Asked why UP is the priority and not any other state, Sundararajan said, “It’s the largest state with the maximum number of gram panchayats that have been taken up in Phase 1. Of the 100,000 panchayats, 25 per cent are from UP.”

Incidentally, in terms of its geographical area, UP is the fourth-largest state in the country, but it is India’s most populous state and electorally the most significant. UP sends the most MPs, or Members of Parliament (80), to the Lok Sabha.

It was key to Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) securing a simple majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, with the party winning 71 of its 282 seats; every fourth BJP MP has been elected from UP. With the 2019 Lok Sabha polls barely 18 months away, UP is crucial to BJP’s plans to return to power at the Centre. Therefore, it isn’t just BharatNet and Saubhagya schemes where UP is the focus.

The successful roll-out of the Ujjwala scheme had contributed to the BJP’s emphatic win in the UP Assembly polls earlier this year. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, or the PM’s ‘housing for all’ scheme, also has UP as its priority state.

The importance of UP in the Centre’s state of affairs can be seen during the recently concluded telecom event, the India Mobile Congress. UP’s Industrial Development Minister Satish Mahana rubbed shoulders with the likes of Communications Minister Manoj Sinha, Information Technology (IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

India Mobile Congress was an exhibition to showcase India’s potential in telecom and IT to the world. Mahana utilised the opportunity to highlight the investment potential in UP in front of global as well as Indian investors.