192 more villages in India electrified last week

 A total of 192 villages in 10 states were electrified last week under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, the government said on Monday.

"Of the total electrified villages, 10 are in Assam, 123 in Meghalaya, 24 in Jharkhand, 15 in Odisha, seven in Rajasthan, five in Uttar Pradesh, three in Nagaland, two each in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, and one in Uttarakhand," said a statement issued here by the Union Power Ministry.

A total of 9,326 villages across the country have been electrified till date, it said.

Of the remaining 9,126 villages, 5,860 are to be electrified through grid, 2,645 through off-grid solutions necessitated by geographical barriers, 316 by the state governments, while 501 villages are uninhabited, the statement added.

At a power ministers' meeting held in Goa in June, the central government and the states resolved to meet the target of taking electricity to all villages by the end of 2016, ahead of the original deadline of May 1, 2018.

In this connection, at an event here last week, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal lauded the role of the Grameen Vidyut Abhiyantas (rural electrical engineers) who have helped to expedite the process of electrification.