Goyal claims credit for electrification in UP

Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday claimed credit for the pace of rural electrification in Uttar Pradesh over the past two years and said efforts of his ministry had helped bring honesty in electrification work.

“When I took over as the power minister, UP lagged behind in the field of rural electrification...it was found that in 2012-13, only three new villages got electrified, while in the next financial year not a single village got power and this was a matter of grave concern,” he said. Goyal was talking to newspersons here after launching the pilot project of District Vidyut Abhiyantas (DVAs) for Uttar Pradesh.

“The Central government, especially the Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (REC), worked in this direction by putting pressure on the state government for taking up works...you will be happy to note that while only three new villages were electrifired in 2012-13 and 2013-14, electrification reached 1,364 villages during 2014-15 and 2015-16,” he said.

The Minister said it was also “because of the efforts made by us that there is more honesty in the work related to electrification”.

This is because the Centre made all out efforts for success of this task, he said, adding, “Now, a detailed review is done at my level every month with power secretaries and officials.”

To a question on Akhilesh Yadav government accusing the Centre of non-cooperation in the power sector, Goyal said, “They should tell what more cooperation it required from the Centre.”

Goyal claimed that Uttar Pradesh was getting top priority in all power projects and that the state has been allotted the maximum of Rs 6,946 crore under the Deendayal Upadhaya Gram Jyoti Yojna.

“In other projects too, UP is being given special emphasis and under such circumstances the allegations of non-cooperation are very difficult to understand,” he said.

The Minister said despite the Gadgil formula (of power allocation) being in force since the past several years, the Centre is ready to provide power to the state as per its demands.

On the pilot project of District Vidyut Abhiyantas, he said through it the district ‘vidyut samitis’ will get the right to monitor the electrification work. He said efforts were on to provide power to all villages in the state by 2019 and the number of DVAs in the state will be increased.

The Minister said the progress of ongoing electrification process on real time basis can be tracked by all the users and stakeholders on #GARV mobile app.