Maharashtra is just 4,234 households away from achieving its goal of total electrification. This Deepavali, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will declare the State 100% electrified after nearly 43,000 villages will be lit up by conventional and non-conventional methods deployed by the Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA) and Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL).
So far, the State has electrified 99.98% of the 2,41,05912 households originally proposed to be electrified under the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) and the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, according to a senior official. “The speedy progress is a result of the work we have been able to carry out post monsoon, especially in the month of October. We have to achieve the 100% mark soon,” said Arvind Singh , Principal Secretary, Energy.
Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu have already achieved the 100% mark before Maharashtra. But the State has been facing challenges in achieving last mile connectivity owing to a supply cost burden and, what the activist are calling a discrepancy in the data on number of villages and households. Both Saubhagya and DDUGJY have adopted 2011 census as a base under which State has 27,856 gram panchayats and 43,000 villages. However, experts said the numbers may have changed over the last seven years and differ from department to department.
Earlier, the State had promised that the December 2018 deadline under the ₹16,320 crore for both schemes would be met. But a controversy was raked up earlier this year with the Congress alleging that the government had managed to cover only 11,988 villages in the four-year of it’s term. This totalled to an average of 3,000 villages a year. The Congress also alleged that the Modi government’s electrification average has been 4,800 villages per year, much lower to the 12,000 villages electrified under UPA between 2005 and 2014
