71 years after Independence, all of India's inhabited villages finally have electricity

• The government has ‘delivered’ on its promise to electrify all 597,464 inhabited villages in India.
• A village is considered electrified if 10% of its households and public places — schools, panchayat office and health centre — have access to power.
• Only 1416 villages have achieved 100% household connectivity.

On Saturday, Manipur's Leisang village became the last non-electrified inhabited village to gain access to electricity. With that, the government has ‘delivered’ on its promise to electrify all 597,464 inhabited villages in India, 1000 days from when Prime Minister Modi made the commitment to do so on 15 August 2015. In fact, they delivered a little before time. It helped that 577,000 villages already had access to electricity before the pledge was made.

However, what’s to be noted is that a village is considered electrified if the basic infrastructure, such as distribution transformer and lines, have been set up in the inhabited localities, including Dalit hamlets, and 10% of its households and public places — schools, panchayat office and health centre — have access to power.

The NDA government launched the ₹760 billion Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) on 25 July 2015. The original target was to provide electricity to 18,452 unelectrified villages, which was later bumped up to 19,727 villages. However, as on 20 April 2018, of the total number of ‘electrified’ villages, only 1416 villages have achieved 100% household connectivity, according to the data on the Grameen Vidyutikaran (rural electrification) website.

Former Power Secretary, P Uma Shankar told the Times Of India, "Village electrification means that the infrastructure to supply power has now reached certain parts of the village. The next step should be to focus on providing connection to all households and ensuring adequate power supply to these homes."

On accomplishing the goal, a chuffed Prime Minister Modi tweeted yesterday: “Leisang village in Manipur, like the thousands of other villages across India has been powered and empowered!”

He also tweeted the following:






The Congress, however, was quick to call the government out on the obvious gloating, claiming that it was taking “fake credit”. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala pointed out that about 97% of nearly 6.5 lakh villages were already electrified by the time the current government came to power.