Karnataka seeks Rs 700 crore for rural electrification

The state government has sought central assistance of Rs 700 crore under the Rajeev Gandhi Grameen Vidyuktikaran Yojana for taking electricity to villages.

The money is to be spent over five years to give electricity to some 16,000 hamlets in the state, chief minister Dharam Singh told reporters here on Monday.

Chief ministers and a governor of 12 states participated, via video conferencing, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the rural electrification project from New Delhi.

This takes the Congress "" Left coalition at the centre a step closer to delivering on its National Common Minimum Programme promise of providing electricity to some 7.8 crore villages in the country that don't have it at all.

Karnataka's public works and energy minister H D Revanna said 72 per cent of rural households in the state had electricity.

The new scheme will benefit some 5.5 lakh below the poverty line households, he said, in the remote and hilly areas.

Deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah in his budget proposals for this fiscal had said some Rs 202 crore will be spent providing electricity to over 2.5 lakh households under a Dalit Basti scheme. Solar power lights would be provided to 1,000 hamlets, bastis and hattis which had no power at all, he said.

On Monday, the Rural Electrification Corporation said, in a release, only 44 per cent of the country's rural households had electricity. Over a lakh villages were yet to get electric power, the release said.