Complete electrification of country by this year-end, promises Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal blamed the wrong policies of the former UPA government for making India import coal from countries like Australia till 2017

Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday claimed that by the end of this year, the country would be completely electrified and no village would be left without a power point.

“We are in fact now in advance stage of electrifying all homes,” he declared.

Addressing the media on completion of three years of his government’s achievements, Goyal said the country had taken giant strides of development in the power sector with an impressive 4.2 times increase in intensive electrification of villages from 14,956 villages in 2013-14 to 63,330 in 2016-17.

Goyal said even as he was addressing the press conference, 13,600 villages were being electrified, though the publicity documents distributed at the event had a figure of only 13,511 villages (as on May 19, 2017). The minister was trying to emphasis the speed with which his ministry, under ‘the electricity for all’ object of Narendra Modi government, was working for the poor with daily targets. He said anybody could see how the sector had been turned around from acute shortage to huge surplus taking the states along and working on a number of schemes simultaneously.

Giving a bird’s eye view of the four major departments that he looks after, he said simultaneous progress was being registered in all departments with an effort to compete with progressive nations while serving the last man as per the vision of Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

“We are a country which is power surplus and coal surplus for the first time since Independence. The abundance of power – hydro, solar, wind and biomass – is sure to give an unprecedented fillip to the overall socio-economic growth of the country. A whooping Rs 76,000 crore has been allocated for a 24 x 7 affordable, reliable and adequate power-for-all scheme,” Goyal added.

The World Bank rating of “ease of getting electricity index” had shown India standing at 99 position in 2015 but had come up the ladder fast and stood at 26 in 2017, he said, adding, “My ministry had kept an eye on coal prices which were not increased though Coal India Limited had enhanced its capacity in a big way in successive years.” There was 55.4 crores tonnes coal reserve available with the government’s PSU and that there was just no dearth of the mineral for power generation and other works, he informed.

Replying to a question, Goyal said it was due to the wrong policies of the UPA government that the country still had to continue import of coal from countries like Australia, though there was no such need felt now. But he said the imports had been reduced in 2017 to save foreign exchange of Rs 25,900 crore.

The minister gave credits to the state governments in helping improve the power scenario in the country but also complained that states like Karnataka or Orissa were not on board the way he wanted them to be. “We are not getting right of way from Karnataka to reach TN and other southern states due to the state government’s approach but hope the issue would be resolved soon.”

Goyal said UDAY (Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana) was a huge success in providing solutions to the past, present and future issues relating to the power distribution companies. Discoms in the states were facing several technical, financial issues affecting power sector badly, he said.

“I am happy to share with you that the world’s most successful scheme of distributing nearly 24 crore LED bulbs in the country was being watched by global majors of the power sector, as it had brought down electricity charges worth Rs 12,000 crore for the consumers.

e said though the global thrust was on new and renewable energy, the government had not given up on ongoing hydro-electric projects in the country and gave example of how the Maheshwar power project across Narmada river in MP – it was in limbo for 15 years – had been revived by his ministry.

He said the Modi government had taken upon itself world’s largest renewable energy expansion programme of 175 GW by 2022 including 100 GW of solar energy which is clean energy meant to help the environment.