New Delhi: Praising the NDA government’s efforts in ensuring rural electrification, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday criticised the previous Congress-led UPA government for its failure to fulfill the promise to provide electricity across the country.
“The past governments made many promises on electrification but never did anything. In 2005, the Manmohan Singh government promised to electrify every village by 2009. The then Congress president (Sonia Gandhi) went a step ahead and said they will bring electricity to every home. Needless to say, none of that happened during their tenure. Even if they would have tried to go to every village and prepare a report, they could’ve accomplished the task by 2010 or 2011,” Modi said during an interaction with people from villages that have been electrified in the past four years.
“It has been 70 years since we attained Independence, but 18,000 villages did not have electric connections (when the NDA government was formed). This was quite unfortunate,” Modi said.
Modi asserted that numerous villages were electrified by the NDA government through Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, and Saubhagya (Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana) schemes. “From the ramparts of the Red Fort, I announced that every village will be electrified. We walked the talk and went to every village. We not only focussed on electrification but also reformed the distribution systems across the country,” he said.
On 28 April, 2018, Leisang in Manipur was the last village to be electrified. During his address, the prime minister interacted with the villagers from Leisang, Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh), Dhalai (Tripura), Sonitpur (Assam), West Singhbhum and Palamu (Jharkhand), Rayagada (Odisha), Reasi (Jammu and Kashmir), Kannauj (Uttar Pradesh), Tehri Garhwal (Uttarakhand) via video conference.