Electrificaton goes rural

Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh will launch the Rajiv Gandhi Vidyutikaran Yojana, the government's ambitious household electrification programme, on April 4.

The programme will be launched in ten states. The Rs 16,000-crore programme, which aims to electrify all rural households over a period of five years, has been given an allocation of Rs 1,100 crore in 2005-06.

Allocations have been made to the ministry of finance in the budget, however, the Finance ministry has agreed to house the corpus in the power ministry, which will be allocating the funds to states.

"A massive programme for rural electrification will begin in 2005-06 with the objective of covering 1.25 lakh villages in five years. The focus will be on deficient States. The programme envisages creation of a rural electricity distribution backbone, with a 33/11 KV substation in each block and at least one distribution transformer in each village," Finance Minister, P Chidambaram had said in the budget speech.

The cabinet approval obtained for the rural electrification programme specified that Rural Electrification Corporation (REC), a non-banking finance company under the power ministry, would be the implementing agency.

REC has already approved 30 projects envisaging electrification of 12,724 villages and over 3.7 lakh households in 14 districts of West Bengal and 18 districts of Uttar Pradesh.

It has also entered into memoranda of understanding with National Thermal Power Corporation, Powergrid, National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and the Damodar Valley Corporation to provide states with project management expertise.

Decentralised distributed generation for villages where grid connetivity is not feasible or cost effective, is envisaged. For the rest, it aims to set up 33*11 kv transmitters in each of the 400 blocks of the country and provide a rural infrastructure back bone which would ensure electricity access to all rural households.