Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Central government has fulfilled all its promises on rural electrification.
Goyal also took a veiled dig at the Congress-led opposition, saying, "Some people tend to forget that in the past when it was said that particular village has been electrified it just meant that there was electricity in Panchayat office or 10% of houses in village. But now villages that have got electricity are completely electrified."
It was a couple of weeks back when Prime Minister Modi hit out at the erstwhile UPA government, saying it failed miserably to live up to their promise to provide electricity across the country.
"In 2005, the then Congress government promised to electrify every village by 2009. The then president of the ruling party went a step ahead and said that they will bring electricity to every home. Needless to say, none of that happened during their long tenure," PM Modi said.
"It has been 70 years since we attained independence but 18,000 villages did not have electricity connections. This was quite unfortunate," the Prime Minister added further.
It was in April this year, when the Centre had announced that the eletrification of all inhabited villages in India was achieved, twelve days ahead of the deadline set by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.