K. Kranti Kumar of Chintapalli mandal in Alluri Sitarama Raju district was elated when Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him about the electricity connection in his village.
He was unable to control his joy when the Prime Minister through a hybrid video conference from the PMO, New Delhi, said ‘Kranti ji Namaskaram’.
Using a translator, he said that the life in his village has changed after they received power through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana in December 2015. “Now we have power and our children can even read at night, the women can take up household work and we need not fear about snakes and scorpions,” he said.
“The population in our village also has increased after we got the electricity connections. We can now see news and know about current affairs and can also charge our mobile phones. Earlier, we had to trek a few kilometres to get our mobiles charged,” he said.
“Most importantly, the womenfolk need not walk for miles to the nearest well to collect drinking water, as we now have borewells with electric motors in our village. Because of this our agriculture productivity has also increased,” said Mr. Kranti.
Mr. Narendra Modi was interacting with the beneficiaries, as part of the grand finale of the ‘Ujwal Bharat, Ujwal Bhavishya Power @2047’ programme, which was organised by the Ministry of Power, as part of the Azadi ki Amrit Mahotsav. The programme was held at AU Convention Hall on Beach Road here on Saturday.
Later, referring to Mr. Kranti Kumar, the Prime Minister said after taking over as PM in 2014, one of his prime focuses was to introduce reforms in the power sector to transform it into a driving force for the economy.
“We concentrated on four aspects – generation, transmission, distribution and connection. In 2014, about 18,000 villages across the country did not have any form of electricity connection, now all of them are connected,” he said.
The generation has also gone up from 2 lakh MW to over 4 lakh MW and lines were laid across over 1.7 lakh kilometres.
Mr. Modi also spoke about green energy and the solar projects that are coming up in Telangana and Kerala.
‘Power dues’
He also pointed out that a few State governments are faltering in their payments to the power generators and this could affect the power supply and development in the States. Combining payment default and subsidies, the State governments have to pay the power generators to the tune of about ₹1.25 lakh crore, he said.
Earlier, K. Vijayanand, Special Chief Secretary (Energy), B. Sridhar, CMD AP Transco, Piyush Singh, Joint Secretary Ministry of Power, Abishek Sharma, Joint Director BEE, K. Santosha Kumar, CMD APEPDCL, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, BJP Rajya Sabha member, Visakhapatnam Mayor G. Hari Venkta Kumari, A. Chandrasekhar Reddy CEO of APSECM, and others spoke.
The PM also virtually launched the Solar Portal for common man, a few other projects and the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme.
