174 more villages in India electrified last week

A total of 174 villages in 12 states were electrified during the last week under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, an official said here on Monday.

"Of the total electrified villages, 15 are in Assam, 12 in Arunachal Pradesh, 82 in Meghalaya, 18 in Jharkhand, 15 in Bihar, 11 in Odisha, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, three each in Rajasthan and Mizoram, and one each in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh," a statement from the Union Power Ministry said.

A total of 9,134 villages were electrified till date in the country, it said.

Of the remaining 9,318 villages, 5,860 are to be electrified through grid, 2,645 through off-grid solutions necessitated by geographical barriers, and 316 villages are to be electrified by the state governments, the statement said.

Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal said at the state Power Ministers' meeting held in Goa last month that the Central government and the states resolved to meet the target of taking electricity to all villages by the end of 2016, ahead of the original deadline of May 1, 2018.

--IANS

bc/ss/bg