: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday ticked off another resolve of his saat nischay (seven resolves) programme with the project to provide a power connection to every household by 2018. But the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) slammed Mr. Kumar for taking credit for a Central government scheme.
Launching the Har Ghar Bijli Lagataar (continuous power to every home) programme, Mr. Kumar said that, under the programme, free electricity connections will be provided to about 50 lakh households above the poverty line. “The target is to provide free power connections to every household in Bihar in the next two years, by 2018,” he said. Earlier, Mr. Kumar had included this scheme in his ambitious saat nischay (seven resolves) programme for the development of the State, which he had announced at the time of the Assembly poll.
Loan from ADBThe CM, however, clarified that the aim is to provide free electricity connections to the households, and not free power. “Beneficiaries will have to pay for the power consumed by them,” he said. “An amount of Rs. 1,857.50 crore has been set aside by the State government for this purpose…the State government has undertaking this Herculean task on its own by drawing a loan from the Asian Development Bank,” he added further.
Mr. Kumar also said that the overall power situation has improved in the State as the per capita consumption of electricity in Bihar has gone up to 258 units from merely 70 units in 2005, and the Statewide demand for electricity has reached 3,769MW per day, up from 700MW in 2005.
Meanwhile, BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav slammed the CM, saying he was taking credit for the Central government’s scheme to provide electricity to every household.
