BJP’s poser to BJD on rural electrification

BHUBANESWAR: WITH the State Government is far behind in its rural electrification target, the BJP on Wednesday asked the ruling BJD to explain why about 39 lakh households of the State are still going without power.

The BJP’s poser came on the third day of BJD’s Jana Sampark Padayatra being undertaken to highlight its achievement in the last 17 years. “Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had set a target to provide electricity to all villages by May 2017 and all households by March 2019. However, about 39 lakh households of the State do not have power connection. People have the right to know about the delay in completion of Centrally-funded rural electrification programme,” State BJP secretary Kalandi Samal told a mediapersons here.

In reply to a question, the State Government had informed the Assembly that the Centre has approved 30 projects worth `1656.48 crore under the rural electrification programme. The ruling party must explain to the people about the progress of the sanctioned projects, Samal said.While the State Government claims to have provided electricity to more than 64 lakh households so far, the status report of the Ministry of Power stated that 51.14 lakh out of 85.5 lakh households of the State have electricity connections.

The BJP further asked the State Government to give a status report on the infrastructure development for rural electrification for which the Centre has sanctioned `560 crore for rural areas and `521 crore for urban areas.Claiming that promoters of 20 MoU-signed thermal power projects have not started work even after a decade of signing agreement with the State Government, senior spokesperson Sajjan Sharma said this proved the inefficiency of ruling party on industrialisation front.