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MOSL: INDIA INDUSTRIALS-Delving into the government’s electrification drive

INDIA INDUSTRIALS: Delving into the government’s electrification drive; Impressive progress made over the last four years

 

One of the key tenets of the Modi government was to provide ‘24x7 Power to All’ and to ensure electricity reaches every village and household in the country. In this note, we discuss the milestones achieved under the village and household electrification schemes of the government; namely Deen Dayal Upadhay Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and SAUBHAGYA, its key beneficiaries and further steps needed to empower the government’s vision of providing electricity to all citizens of the country.

Village electrification completed in Apr’18

• The DDUGJY (erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutkaran Yojana) aims to provide electricity connections to all villages across the country with a focus on feeder separation and strengthening of the sub transmission & distribution infrastructure, including metering in rural areas. A village is said to be electrified if (a) at least 10% of households are electrified, (b) basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and lines are available, and (c) electricity is provided to public places like schools, panchayat offices, etc. The total outlay of this scheme is INR759b and all villages in the country were covered in Apr’18 itself, which was a month ahead of the targeted May’18, having reached ~600,000 villages (See Exhibit 1). ~20,000 villages were electrified during FY15-Apr’18 under the current dispensation at the Center. Under the scheme, a total of 0.3m kms of HT/LT lines and 0.4m distribution transformers have been commissioned. However, despite villages being electrified, largely many households were still without electricity, which led to the government initiating the ‘SAUBHAGYA” scheme.