152 more villages electrified last week

A total of 152 villages in nine states were electrified during the week ended July 3 under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, an official statement said on Monday.

"Of the electrified villages, 49 are in Assam, 22 in Jharkhand, 54 in Meghalaya, 10 in Odisha, one in Chhattisgarh, six in Madhya Pradesh, four in Bihar and three each in Arunachal Pradesh and Rajasthan," said the statement from the union power ministry.

A total of 8,681 villages have been electrified till date, the statement said.

Of the remaining 9,771 villages, 6,241 are to be electrified through grid, 2,727 through off-grid solutions necessitated by geographical barriers, and 324 villages are to be electrified by the state governments; 479 villages are uninhabited, the statement added.

At the state power ministers' meeting held in Goa last month, the central government and the states resolved to meet the target of taking electricity to all villages by the end of this year, ahead of the original deadline of May 1, 2018, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal had said.

--IANS

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