Centre's hike in ratio for rural power proj to hit Bihar: State electricity minister

The Bihar government on Thursday hit out at the Centre for raising the sharing ratio in implementation of rural electrification scheme at 60:40 between the Centre and states and said the hike will put additional pressure on financial resources of poor states.

"The Centre has raised sharing ratio at 60:40 against 90:10 earlier between Centre and states in implementation of the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, a national rural electrification project, which will put additional burden on financial resources of a poor state like Bihar," Electricity minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav said in the legislative Assembly while replying to a debate on his department's budget of Rs 14,367.84 crore for 2016-17.

The electricity department's budgetary demands were later passed in the House by voice vote amid a walk out by the Opposition NDA legislators.

The House also passed the budgetary demands of three other departments – Commercial taxes (Rs 102.58 crore), Tourism (Rs 672.49 crore) and SC/ST Welfare (Rs 1628.63 crore) – through guillotine, a parliamentary practice used to pass financial bills without debate.

Notwithstanding financial burden on its thin resources to meet the state's share in implementation of Deen Dayal Gram Jyoti Yojana in Bihar, Yadav said the state government was on track to set up 132/33 Kv grid sub-stations at Banka, Jamui, Siwan, Bhagalpur, Nawada, Kaimur and Katihar districts, which would improve transmission capacity by 840 Mw from its existing capacity.

Once these seven 132/33 Kv grid sub-stations become functional, Bihar would be able to use 4,500 Mw power against 3,459 Mw used during 'peak load' hours last year, the minister said.