Saubhagya to energise 5K houses sans power

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 5

As many as 5,000 households in Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar and Bhiwani, considered to be affluent districts of Haryana, are still without electricity in this era of technology.

These are besides 14,000 households of Nuh, the most backward district of the state, where people were still living without electricity, but the government has now initiated steps to energise them.

In a survey conducted under the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojna (Saubhagya), a scheme for the electrification of all rural households, the state government has discovered that while in districts falling under the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN), all rural households have electricity connections, nearly 3,800 clusters of houses, involving 5,000 households, are still without power in Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar and Bhiwani falling under the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN).

PK Das, Additional Chief Secretary, Power Department, said the state government had decided to energise all these households by November 1 this year though as per the target fixed by the Central Government under “Saubhagya”, it is to be done by December 31.

Under Saubhagya, free electricity connections to all households (both above poverty line (APL) and poor families) in rural areas and poor families in urban areas are to be provided by December 2018. The Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) has been designated as its nodal agency for the Saubhagya scheme.

Das said after a meeting with Additional Chief Secretary, New and Renewable Energy, Prasanta Kumar Mahapatra, it had been decided to provide electricity to all households that fall within the radius of 1km of the rural domestic feeders of the DHBVN.

However, in case of houses falling more than 1km radius of the rural domestic feeders, the government will provide these solar panels under the Manohar Jyoti Scheme of the Haryana Government.

Under Manohar Jyoti Scheme, the “power-less” households will be provided a solar panel that can run 2 bulbs, one fan and a phone charger.

“In Haryana, all households in villages have electricity connections. Even those living in dhanis are energised. Only 5000-odd households which are scattered in fields in Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar and Bhiwani are without power. About 14,000 houses in Nuh were also without power, but the work in that district has already begun under another scheme,” Das said.

He added that the final survey of households falling within the radius of 1 km and those falling away would be complete by August 16 and the work on electrification would begin soon thereafter.