The Union government has accepted the Uttar Pradesh Power Minister’s appeal and sanctioned 12 lakh new power connections under ‘Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana’, also known as Saubhagya scheme, giving another chance to the poor to get free electricity connections.
A senior official said that the UP government had identified 22 lakh connections for the poor under Saubhagya scheme but the Centre approved 12 lakh connections.
“UP had sent a letter to the Centre, requesting it to reopen the Saubhagya project for some time and extend the deadline of some other Centre-funded schemes by three months. The deadline for these schemes is September 30,” the official said.
A letter issued by the Centre on Tuesday said that a proposal received from REC to consider the request of Uttar Pradesh for electrification of 12 lakh new households has been accepted. The state may electrify these households under Saubhagya scheme with some conditions.
The letter specified only the houses which were listed till March 31 should be taken up.
The conditions by the Centre are that connections should be provided to those who were unwilling earlier but are now looking forward for the same and are not defaulters in any way. “The defaulters whose connections were dis-continued earlier will not be covered under this scheme,” the letter said.
Saubhagya scheme, which seeks to provide electricity connection to each and every household, was launched nationally in September 2017 with UP giving more than one crore new connections to as many families. The scheme ended on March 31 earlier this year
It is estimated that 20-25 lakh households did not take electricity connections under Saubhagya scheme for various reasons. Many poor families in villages or even in cities were not ready to take power connections even for free, saying that they would not be able to pay the bills.
“The situation has changed now. With villages getting electricity for more than 12 hours, the villagers are now willing to get connections. Therefore, the number of willing people have shot up, forcing us to demand more connections under Saubhaghya scheme,” the official said.
UP Power Minister Srikant Sharma thanked the Centre for sanctioning 12 lakh new power connections and claimed that it would lighten up the houses of the poor. New power distribution sub-stations are also being set under Saubhagya scheme to deal with the future demand growth and for this purpose, the scheme is on till September 30. However, the state government is seeking extension of the scheme till December 31 for the purpose of sub-station construction.