Power in 82 per cent rural households'

New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that every single village of the country has now access to electricity, the Union power ministry on Monday issued a clarification that household electrification level in rural areas is more than 82 per cent across various states, and had the ministry restricted itself to the actual definition of “electrification”, then such level of rural electrification could not have been achieved.

The clarification appeared to be a defensive move, aimed at stemming any possible attack by the Opposition over the government’s claim of 100 per cent electrification of villages. Incidentally, the clarification coincided with Congress leader P. Chidambaram describing the Prime Minister’s claim of achieving 100 per cent village electrification as a “complete jumla” and accusing him of taking credit for work done by the previous regimes.

Stating that there are some 5.97 lakh villages in the country, Mr Chidambaram accused the Modi government of taking credit for complete rural electrification although the UPA government electrified lakhs of villages in the country during 2004-2014.

“Its like somebody makes the ice-cream, puts it in a cup, someone comes and puts a cherry on it and says I made this ice-cream. He comes in, electrifies last 18,000 villages and says that its a great achievement of my government. I have electrified all the villages,” the Congress leader said.

According to the official definition, a village is considered electrified even if 10 per cent of its households have access to electrification.

The power ministry, in its clarification, said that “definition of village electrification is a legacy issue which, though, mandates electrification of at least 10 per cent households in a village, does not imply restricting household electrification only to 10 per cent”.

Citing recent reports from states, it further said that household electrification level in rural areas is more than 82 per cent, ranging from 47 to 100 per cent across various states.

“Had the definition been the cause, such level of household electrification could not have been achieved. The variation in level of electrification across various regions and states within the country is primarily because of its size in terms of topography and location... but the government has already moved out of this dichotomy and launched ‘Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana’ — Saubhagya to achieve universal household electrification in the country by December 31, 2018,” the ministry said.