RK Singh said the government has also brought forward the target of electrifying every household
Power minister RK Singh today said taking electricity to every village in India was a milestone that deserved proper celebration and hit out at the Congress following criticism that the BJP was taking full credit for the mammoth task. The Congress, he said, has not only failed to bring electricity to 40 million homes despite being in power for 60 years, it also did a "shoddy job" and left the most remote and inaccessible villages for the last.
"None of the Prime Ministers had the courage to stand up and say that every village will be connected in 1,000 days. It takes a huge amount of courage. You are putting your credibility on the line," Mr Singh told NDTV.
In 2015, PM Modi had promised that all villages will receive electricity within 1,000 days. Yesterday, he said the job was done and a village in Manipur was the last to get electricity on Saturday.
The announcement provoked criticism and denial in equal measure. Critics pointed out that electrification does not equate taking electricity to every home. Others said in remote areas, many villages still lack power connection. The Congress pointed out how they electrified 12,000 villages a year, while the NDA rate was about 4,000 villages per year.
Asked if it was fair to take credit for electrification when 97 per cent of it was already done and only 18,000 villages remained, Mr Singh said the government ended up connecting more than 20,000 villages after the figure was revised. This, he said, was most difficult because villages in especially remote and inaccessible areas were left for the last.
"They could have done it 10 years ago. Why didn't they? Because they never thought about it," Mr Singh told NDTV. "We found that the work done by them was shoddy. We had to re-do a lot of it. You can ask the state secretaries and they will tell you this," he added.
Mr Singh said the government has also brought forward the next target of electrifying every household as part of last mile connectivity from March 2019 to December 2018.
Critics have pointed out that more than taking power to villages through cables, the real test will be whether the government can ensure power supply to every household. Asked how the government would manage to light up 3.1 million homes, when only 8 per cent of the current villages had 100 per cent households with power, he said, "I am confident that I will do it".