145 more villages electrified, says government

New Delhi, June 27 (IANS) A total of 145 villages in nine states were electrified during the week ended June 26 under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, an official statement said on Monday.

“Of the electrified villages, 67 are in Assam, 16 in Jharkhand, 29 in Meghalaya, 11 in Odisha, one in Uttar Pradesh, two in Chhattisgarh, three in Madhya Pradesh, and eight each in Bihar and Rajasthan,” said the statement from the union power ministry.

A total of 8,529 villages have been electrified till date, the statement said.

Of the remaining 9,923 villages, 6,374 are to be electrified through grid, 2,754 villages are to be electrified through off-grid solutions necessitated by geographical barriers, and 336 villages are to be electrified by the state governments; 459 villages are uninhabited, the statement added.

At the state power ministers’ meeting held in Goa earlier this 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.

Addressing reporters at end of the two-day meeting, Goyal said all states, except those affected by left wing extremism, have resolved to electrify all the remaining unelectrified villages by December 2016 and will award contracts within the next month for the works.

He said the states were determined to provide power to 18,452 villages in the country in a mission mode by May 1, 2017.