The previous governments did not take the electrification needs of the country seriously, according to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During an interaction with beneficiaries of the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, Modi said, “Even if the earlier government had started electrification of the remaining 18,000 villages in 2009, they would have completed it much in advance.”

Modi also said that East India, in particular, was ignored by the previous governments. “Of the 18,374 un-electrified villages, 14,542 were in East India. Of these, 5,790 were in the North-East alone,” he said.

This may be because these regions have fewer people and fewer parliamentary seats, so they were not considered politically relevant by the previous dispensation, he said.