Karnataka, Assam, Uttar Pradesh lag behind in electrification race
Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Assam are the large states lagging in terms of performance in the NDA government’s ambitious “Saubhagya” household electrification scheme with 18.8 million households electrified since October 11 last year with another 11 million awaiting electrification.
Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Assam are the large states lagging in terms of performance in the National Democratic Alliance government’s ambitious “Saubhagya” household electrification scheme with 18.8 million households electrified since October 11 last year with another 11 million awaiting electrification.
According to data, the government has spent Rs 10,544 crore on the “Saubhagya” scheme with 10 states achieving 100% electrification. (HT/Picture for representation)
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The scheme was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 25, 2017. The numbers mean 62% of the households without electricity as of October 10 last year, now have electricity. India has around 250 million households.
While Karnataka is ruled by an alliance of the Janata Dal (S) and the Congress, UP and Assam are ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party governments.
According to data available with the power ministry till November 1, the government has spent Rs 10,544 crore on the scheme with 10 states achieving 100% electrification. The Centre has allocated a total of Rs 16,320 crore for electricity connections and infrastructure support.
The states which have achieved their targets are Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Puducherry, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
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However, the government is concerned with the pace of household electrification in Uttar Pradesh and Assam with only 44 and 40 per cent of the unelectrified households as of last year being electrified. Prime Minister Modi has said that all households across India will be electrified by 2019. Karnataka has only completed 37% of its work.
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However, the government is concerned with the pace of household electrification in Uttar Pradesh and Assam with only 44 and 40 per cent of the unelectrified households as of last year being electrified. Prime Minister Modi has said that all households across India will be electrified by 2019. Karnataka has only completed 37% of its work.
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The NDA made electrification one of the main achievements it touted when it completed four years in power in May and analysts say that this will be one of the main developmental achievements it talks about in the campaign for the parliamentary elections next year.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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