NITI: Many houses powerless despite electrification drive

The government’s rural electrification drive has not improved the situation “appreciably” as many households in electrified villages continue to live without power, a recent NITI Aayog report said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Red Fort address on August 15, 2015, had vowed to electrify 18,452 dark villages in the next 1,000 days — the deadline being May 1, 2018. Power Minister Piyush Goyal in May had said that of 18,452 dark villages, 13,516 villages were electrified, 944 were uninhabited and remaining 3,992 villages would be electrified by May 1, 2018. But, the government think-tank said with nearly 304 million Indians without access to electricity, and about 500 million people still dependent on solid bio-mass for cooking, it might be acknowledged that the country had to still go a long way on securing its energy security objective.