The Power Minister, Shri P. M. Sayeed, today reiterated the Government’s commitment to complete electrification of all rural households in the country in the next five years. The scheme involves an outlay of Rs.60,000 crore with a provision of 90% capital subsidy on it. Shri Sayeed was addressing the first Parliamentary Consultative Committee meeting attached to his Ministry here.
He said the services of the central public undertakings have been offered to the States to assist them in executing rural electrification projects as per their needs. To increase the implementation capacities of the scheme, the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) has entered into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with NTPC, Powergrid, NHPC and the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC). The States can avail themselves of their project management expertise and capabilities.
Shri Sayeed informed the MPs that the REC has approved 30 projects envisaging electrification of 12,724 villages and over 3 lakh 68 thousand households in 14 districts of West Bengal and 18 districts of Uttar Pradesh. The approval would facilitate immediate initiation of procurement activities by the concerned agencies. The Minister agreed with the MPs that the distribution network needs to be improved. He said there is a proposal to install stations of 33 kv capacity in every block of the country to remove the distribution bottlenecks.
The MPs demanded their involvement in the committees to monitor the implementation of the rural electrification scheme. They demanded proper voltage and immediate replacement of the worn-out transformers to ensure better power supply in the villages. Those who participated in the discussion were S/Shri S.K.Kaarvendhan, M.P.R. Mallipudi, Suresh Chandel, Subhash Desmukh, Abdul Rashid Shaheen, Iliyas Azmi, E.Ponnuswamy, Anirudh Prasad (Sadhu) Yadav, Ajit Kumar Singh, R.P.Goenka, Harish Rawat, Kripal Parmar, Bashistha Narain Singh, Dipanakar Mukherjee, K.S.Rao and Smt. Sukhbuns Kaur.
(Release ID :5769)