Govt's power scheme lights up 253 villages

As many as 253 villages were electrified last week under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna (DDUGJY).

"253 villages were electrified across the country during last week (February 8-14, 2016) under... DDUGJY," the Power Ministry said in a statement today.

Out of the 253 villages, 111 are in Odisha, 81 in Assam, 40 in Jharkhand, 13 in Rajasthan, 4 in Bihar, 3 in Madhya Pradesh and 1 in Uttar Pradesh, it said.

In view of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the nation on Independence Day last year, the government had decided to electrify 18,452 unelectrified villages within 1,000 days i.e. by May 1, 2018.

The scheme was kicked off in July last year by Prime Minister Modi as part of power sector reforms in rural areas with a view to ensuring round-the-clock electricity supply to farmers and rural households.

The project has been taken up in a mission mode and the strategy for electrification consists of squeezing the implementation schedule to 12 months and dividing the village electrification process into 12-stage milestones with defined timelines for monitoring.

In 2015-16, 5,279 villages have been electrified so far, it said.

Of the remaining 13,173 villages, 9,228 are to be electrified through grid and 3,398 off-grid, while 547 villages are to be electrified by state governments, it added.