'Modi government committed to provide uninterrupted power'

Union minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday said the Narendra Modi government was committed to provide continuous power to every household in the country by the year 2019.

Participating in an interactive programme - 'Talkathon' - telecast live on Doordarshan and the ministry of information and broadcasting website, the minister of state (MoS) with independent charge for power, coal and new and renewable energy said that efforts were on to achieve the target of providing electricity 24x7 to every household by the end of 2019.

"We are creating a robust plan for it," he said, adding that no coal-run power plant in the country was facing any shortage of coal, as they used to during the earlier regime.

"I can tell you that no coal-run power plant in the country has any shortage of coal," Goyal announced while explaining how the situation had improved ever since the Modi government took charge at the Centre.

Answering a query made through twitter by a viewer, the minister said it was now up to the state governments to come forward and buy power and provide it to the people.

Discussing the case of Uttar Pradesh, where shortage of electricity has been a problem for long, Goyal said the states concerned have to fix their transmission lines and they must buy power from where ever in the country they can buy it.

Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Irani and Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman also participated in the programme.