The UPA Government’s ambitious flagship scheme for electrifying all villages and rural households across the country under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) has turned out to be a damp squib.
Not only did the annual target achievement rate of the RGGVY dip sharply over the last three financial years, but shockingly not a single un-electrified village was lit up under the scheme in States like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Uttarakhand in 2013-14.
While States like Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh took pride in the fact that villages falling under their jurisdiction were already electrified and did not nominate any village under the RGGVY between 2011-12 and 2013-14, the fact that villages nominated under the scheme in geographically sensitive States like Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan have poor records, is a cause for worry.
Official sources say that various reasons like delay in forest clearances and land acquisition in many States, poor transmission infrastructure, law and order problems, local taxes and difficult terrain are some of the reasons which have led to poor records under RGGVY.
According to figures available with The Pioneer, in FY14, West Bengal submitted detailed project reports (DPRs) for electrifying four villages under this scheme. However none of them could be electrified during the period. The country’s largest state in terms of population
Uttar Pradesh during the same period, did not submit any proposal for electrifying unlit villages and in terms of achievement of the target for 2013-14, the figure for the state stood at -12 (minus 12, which indicates backlog of previous years).
Uttarakhand however did not choose to disturb the scorer and like UP failed to nominate a single village for FY14 and its target for the financial year too remained zero. Karnataka also did not nominate any village and its target for the same period was -4.
In terms of achieving the annual targets of lighting up un-electrified villages across the country is concerned, in 2011-12 under RGGVY out of the total 14,500 un-electified villages which were to be electrified, only 7,934 could be electrified. In other words only 54 per cent of the target could be achieved. In 2012-13, the achievement target fell further to 43 per cent as out of the total 6,000 un-electrified villages which were to be electrified, only 2,587 such villages could be covered.
In 2013-14 the achievement rate came down to a dismal 36 per cent as out of the 3,300 unlit villages only 1,197 could be given electricity. Of course there were states like Gujarat, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, from where not a single proposal for lighting up unlit villages came under RGGVY. However according to official sources, these states did not propose any DPR under the scheme for lighting up villages as they claimed that villages falling under their respective jurisdiction are already electrified. In fact intensive electrification of already electrified villages is being undertaken in these states, sources added.
However what is more disturbing is the poor record of electrification of unlit villages situated in some key geographically sensitive states like J&K, Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh (which share their borders with countries like Pakistan and China).
In J&K during 2011-12 out of 136 villages nominated to be electrified, only 35 villages could be covered. In FY13 out of 91 villages only 28 could be electrified, while in FY14 only 27 out of the targeted 61 villages could be provided with electricity under RGGVY.
During FY12 out of the 83 villages which were to be electrified only 52 of them could get full electricity. In 2012-13 only five villages could be covered out of the annual target of 17 villages, while in the just concluded FY14 out of the 12 villages which were to be electrified, not a single village could be electrified.
The sensitive Arunachal Pradesh also lags behind in terms of fully electrified villages as in FY14 out of the 406 targetted villages only 282 could be electrified. In 2011-12 out of the 1,450 villages which were to be lit up, only 634 of them could be electrified. However the state’s record in FY13 was impressive when out of the total 392 villages it managed to electrify 387 villages.
Rajasthan which shares its border with Pakistan has had a dismal record under RGGVY as in 2013-14 it managed to electrify only 18 out of the total 99 villages. In 2011-12 it had lit up 182 out of the total 418 villages, while in 2012-13 out of the total 231 villages, it could only provide full electricity to 138 villages.
The UPA Government had launched RGGVY in April 2005 by merging all the then ongoing schemes. Under the programme, 90 per cent grant is provided by the Centre while the remaining 10 per cent is given as loan by the State-owned Rural Electrification Corporation (REC, which is also the nodal agency for the scheme) to the State Governments.