When the helicopter carrying Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his officials lifted up from the airport at Gaya after the sunset, when he had a pleasant surprise to see below the streaks of lights on the entire fully illuminated route down to Patna. He asked his secretaries to take out their mobile phones and take the pictures. “This was a real pleasant surprise,” he said while addressing a meeting to mark the completion of his ambitious project “Har ghar bijli” under his seven resolves. All the households in Bihar have been connected with power in a record time and two months prior to the deadline of December 31, 2018.
What a huge contrast! In February 2004, The Economist in A Survey of India special supplement said, “Satellite photos of India at night show Bihar at centre of an area of darkness. Electricity is a sporadic luxury.”
Nitish and his Energy Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav have another interesting folk story to link with darkness or non-electricity in rural areas. They revealed a “bhoot” (ghost) story at the glittering programme to mark the sixth foundation day of Bihar State Power Holding Company (BSPHC) hours after the Halloween day observed across the world .
“The mothers used to disallow children going out of home by scaring them that bhoot in the darkness will catch them. Now with electricity everywhere the bhoot has been driven away. This is a big social reform,” said Nitish. “Under the light they read, play and move out without a fear because mothers can no longer scare them with ghosts of darkness. The ghost is gone”, Yadav added ,
Energy department principal secretary and BSPHC CMD Pratyaya Amrit said under the mission mode all hands in the companies worked constantly beating the weather woes to complete the gigantic task.
Bihar is eighth States to achieve total electrification. Until 2005 electricity was a luxury and even in big towns including State capital 24 hours power was beyond imagination.
Amrit said “har ghar bijli” scheme was launched by the CM on November 15, 2016 fixing a target to take power to all the households desirous to have connection by December 31, 2018. “We worked with dedication and zeal and achieved this goal two months earlier. Our work became model for the country and teams from other States and Centre visited to see it. The Centre adopted this scheme under its Saubhagya Yojna,” said Amrit under whose leadership the herculean task of lighting Bihar turned a reality in just few years. “2719 un-electrified villages and 26,000 settlements were electrified in only 87 days and our team did it with precision,” he added.