Minister nails Modi’s lie of bulb in every home

Prime Minister Modi had claimed there is an electric bulb in every home and all villages had been electrified four days ahead of a 1000-day target of May 1, 2018. But the government could not perpetuate the lie when asked to make a statement on record in Parliament on Tuesday.

In a written reply, Minister of State for Power with independent charge R K Singh could not hide the truth that 2.80 crore households were still without electricity as on 30.06.2018 and the target is to reach them by March 2019 (before the Lok Sabha elections?).

Those still without electricity include backward communities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, as only 19.40 crore out of a total 22.20 crore households have been electrified as on June 30 last, the minister said.

The statistics appended by the minister show that there is not a single district in BJP-ruled Rajasthan that has provided electricity to all households. Barmer district topped with 1.88 lakh households without electricity, followed by Udaipur 1.63 lakh households, Nagaur 1.09 lakh, Alwar 99,363, Bikaner 84,219, etc.

In Maharashtra, 10 out of 34 districts have provided all households with electricity. They are: Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Satara, Ratnagiri, Nagpur and Wardha.

The districts with the highest number of households without electricity are: Nandurbar (29,479), followed by Gadchiroli (20,178), Jalgaon (18,603), Beed (17,347), Nanded (15,738), and Nashik (13,096).

In the case of Chhattisgarh, only Raipur district has achieved 100% electrification of all households while 26 other districts are still deficit, the highest tally being that of 61,878 households in Balrampur district.

Unlike these four BJP-ruled states, another BJP-ruled state of Haryana can take pride that it has no district with any electricity deficit household, with the exception of Mewat. As many as 13,480 households in the district are still without electricity.