Gross irregularities have been detected in Centre?s ambitious project, Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (National Rural Electrification Programme), in the state. The Planning Commission has received complaints from around 700 villages in the state of anomalies and fudging of figures. While some villages complained of no electrification work having been done, there were others which had been marked twice to enhance the numbers.
Taking a serious note of it, the power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, along with secretary energy Anil Razdan, held an emergency meeting with the state?s principal secretary for energy VN Garg and Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited(UPPCL) managing director, Avnish Awasthi to take stock of the situation. When asked to give details of the complaints, the state government and UPPCL officials were at a complete loss, the minister said.
Speaking to a selected group of newspersons on Tuesday after inaugurating the 400/220 kv powergrid substation in Lucknow, Sushilkumar Shinde said the state government has been given a week?s time to submit a report on the same. When asked whether there were complaints of sub-standard work too, the minister replied in the affirmative and said an inquiry is being commissioned into that too.
The idea behind the ambitious RGGVY project, which is funded by the rural electrification corporation, is to light up every single of the over one lakh villages in the country by 2012. As many as 30,000 villages in UP are awaiting electrification.
Meanwhile, the controversial 3,740mw Dadri power project, which has been under a cloud ever since its inception, got an assurance of a new lease of life with the power minister saying that the project will see the light of the day and the gas linkage issue will be resolved soon. Saying the union power ministry has nothing to do with the dispute, the minister said the ministry?s job was to facilitate things and it is working on the issue of gas linkage for the project. The minister?s view was echoed by the energy secretary.