Uttar Pradesh, the largest beneficiary of the Saubhagya scheme, needs to electrify 60,000 households every day to achieve the target of 100% household electrification. In a meeting, chaired by power minister RK Singh, here last month, representatives of the state’s power department said they intend to focus first on flood prone areas before the onset of the monsoon season. North Bihar intends to complete necessary works by the end of June, the minutes of the meeting seen by FE showed. Electrification of six lakh households in Jharkhand and 14 districts of Odisha is also likely to be completed in the same period.
Uttar Pradesh, with 1.6 crore un-electrified households when the scheme was announced, is seen to be the largest beneficiary of the Saubhagya scheme. The other states where large number of connections need to be provided are Bihar (40.8 lakh), Odisha (35.4 lakh), Jharkhand (32.3 lakh) and Madhya Pradesh (28.7 lakh). Jharkhand and Assam are working to figure out the exact number of eligible beneficiaries of the scheme, which they believe, would reduce the number of potential beneficiary households. CARE Ratings noted on Monday that discoms of these states would require an additional Rs 15,500-18,000 crore over the next seven months in order to electrify remaining households as they would find it difficult to rapidly create infrastructure and expand transmission network to ensure last-mile connectivity.
Undergoing the initial stages of the Saubhagya scheme, discoms of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have already flagged rising rural supply as key a contributor towards mounting aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses. UP and MP have already provided power connections to 15.5 lakh and 13.5 lakh households, respectively. All states confirmed in the meeting that they would complete household electrification within the December deadline.
The failure to connect only 4.5 lakh households against the target of 14.5 lakh through the ‘Gram Swaraj Abhiyan’ (which aimed 100% implementation of Saubhagya in 16,850 villages in just 22 days by May 5) campaign has raised questions about the government’s ability to meet ‘over-ambitious’ targets on time. More than 3.3 crore households need to be electrified for the success of Saubhagya.