Scindia seeks Rs36,000 cr to meet rural power targets

Minister of state for electricity with independent charge Jyotiraditya Scindia told the Lok Sabha on Thursday that he has requested finance minister P Chidambaram to allocate Rs36,000 crore for meeting the 12th Plan target of providing power to 574,000 rural households under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) scheme.

He said the government was determined to meet the target of providing electricity to all households by 2017.

"I have requested the finance minister to allocate Rs36,000 crore for RGGVY to meet this target of providing power to 5,74,000 households," he said.

Leader of the opposition Sushma Swaraj Swaraj was not convinced by Scindia's assertions and said several districts and villages have not yet been included in the RGGVY. She cited the example of Raisain district in Madhya Pradesh. The minister, however, maintained that Raisain has now been covered under RGGVY.

Several members complained that transformers provided under RGGVY get burnt. Scindia blamed this on overloading due to unauthorised connections and illegal hooking, connected load being more than the approved load in households given connections under the scheme, and bypassing of the protection system, leading to transformers getting burnt out.

Bihar is the worst state in this regard with 6,236 RGGVY transformers getting burnt, followed by Jharkhand (4,392) and Orissa (1,451), he said.

Scindia said repair and replacement of burnt transformers is the responsibility of the implementing agency before the infrastructure is handed over to the distribution companies or power departments. After handover, the responsibility shifts to the discoms/power departments, who are expected to carry out the same as per their norms and procedures.