Electricity Connections to 41 lakh rural household under RGGVY

New Delhi, Oct 7 (UNI) Under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY)50,969 villages have been electrified as on September 15, 2008, an official statement said here today.

Electricity connections have been provided to 40.95 lakh rural household, which includes free electricity connections to 33.7 lakh BPL households.

The Government has so far released capital subsidy of Rs 10,079.87 Crore, out of which Rs 1,666.42 crore has been released during 2008-09.

Minister of Power, Sushilkumar Shinde recently reviewed the progress under the scheme which was launched by the government in 2005 with an objective to electrify all the unelectrified villages in the country.

The scheme provides 90 per cent capital subsidy for electricity distribution infrastructure and 100 per cent subsidy for providing electricity connections to rural BPL households.

A capital subsidy of Rs 33, 000 Crore has been provided for the same, the statement added.

Twenty-seven States are covered under the scheme.

The Ministry has so far sanctioned 558 projects covering 530 districts in these 27 states, which targets to electrify 1.15,523 villages and to provide electricity connection to 2.43 Crore BPL households.

Out of these 558 projects, 323 projects have been sanctioned during 2008, of which 133 have been awarded. Special focus has been provided to village electrification in the states of North East and J&K.

The targets for 2008-09 is to electrify 25,000 villages and to provide electricity connections to 50 lakh BPL households.

As on 15th September 2008, 3,143 villages have been electrified and free connections have been provided to 10.76 lakh BPL households, the statement said.

The Minister stated that now the emphasis of the Ministry was on creation of sub transmission infrastructure, addition of generation capacity by the states as part of their Rural Electrification Plan to meet the load growth, energisation of created infrastructure and taking over of created assets under the scheme by the DISCOMs.

Under the scheme, establishment of franchisees for management of rural distribution network has been made mandatory. Franchisees are already in place in 14 States covering 89.827 villages.

The Ministry of Power has taken up capacity building programme for franchisees and training of trainers of franchisees.

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