Power edge for state
2 min readPatna: Bihar is marching towards yet another milestone – providing electricity connection to all households by the end of this year.
The details of the plan were also shared with Raj Kumar Singh, Union minister of state (independent charge) for power and new & renewable energy, on Tuesday during a review meeting.
Bihar would achieve the goal by the end of this year, he was informed. “The Union minister was very much satisfied with the works done so far on household electrification work,” Bihar State Power Holding Company Limited chairman Pratyaya Amrit, who took part in the review meeting, told The Telegraph.
The state government had launched the scheme on its own in November 2016. It was named as the Har Ghar Bijli scheme, which was part of the seven resolves of the state government.
In September last year when the Centre launched Saubhagya, a similar scheme which was more or less a replica of the state scheme, Bihar had already started work on household electrification, giving it an advantage over other states.
So much so, that the state is aiming to complete the work three months ahead of the March 2019 cut-off date set by the central government under the Saubhagya scheme.
Sharing details about the progress made on this front, Pratyaya said: “Based on our assessment, a total of 25 lakh households had to be provided power connection when the scheme was launched. Out of these un-electrified households, the power distribution companies – North Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited and South Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited – which are executing the scheme on the ground had provided connections to 5.99 lakh households by March 31 this year.
“We are going to add another 2.5 lakh households in April,” Pratyaya said.
He said that plans had been chalked out to provide power connection to another 3 lakh households in the month of May and an equal number in June.
The power companies have also taken into account the weather factor and for the rainy season (July to September) when several places in Bihar are hit by floods, they are foreseeing a slowdown in household electrification work.
“Well before the rainy season we would have electrified more than 14 lakh households out of the 25 lakh and in the last three months of the year we can again work in a mission mode to complete the household electrification work in time,” Pratyaya explained.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
