Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stressed on improving electricity supply to the remotest possible areas in rural parts of the country and for this purpose, the Power Ministry has been asked to prioritise the works underlined within the ambit of the newly launched Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY). According to sources privy to the development, during a recent review meeting undertaken by Modi of all the key infrastructure ministries like Power, Roads and Highways, Railway and Civil Aviation, he is learnt to have laid emphasis on strengthening the power supply infrastructure in rural India.
Power Ministry officials were directed during the meeting to focus on electrifying rural areas and to achieve this, there are plans afoot to implement the components of DDUGJY in an aggressive manner. The Cabinet had in November last year cleared DDUGJY, whose major focus will be towards improving and augmenting number of hours of power supply in rural areas, as they suffer a lot due to load shedding and poor supply. Apart from this, the scheme will also look at improving billed energy based on metered consumption, as well as providing access to power to rural households.
The remaining targets of Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY), which had been introduced by the UPA Government, of the ongoing 12th Five Year Plan as well as the 13th Plan period, have been subsumed within DDUGJY. Official sources told The Pioneer that work has already started towards implementing the new rural electrification scheme and efforts are on to ensure that power supply in villages is improved to some extent. For this, the initial focus is that some kind of tangible action is visible by the end of this fiscal.
The mandate of DDUGJY is up to 2022, i.e. by the end of the 13th Five Year Plan period. The process of sanction of projects under DDUGJY had commenced immediately after the Cabinet had approved it in November 2014. The total worth of DDUGJY is Rs 43,033-crore and it has two components. Under the first component, agriculture and non-agriculture feeders will be separated for facilitating judicious rostering of supply to agricultural and non-agricultural consumers in rural areas. Under the second component of the scheme, strengthening and augmentation of sub transmission and distribution infrastructure in rural areas will be done.
The estimated cost of the scheme for above two components is Rs43,033 crore which includes the requirement of budgetary support of Rs33,453 crore from the Government over the entire implementation period. Once the projects are fully sanctioned under the new scheme, contracts for execution of projects will be awarded by states distribution companies. The projects are to be completed within 24 months from date of award.