BJP-Congress battle over credit

GUWAHATI, April 30: The Congress and the BJP are engaged in war for claiming the credit for total electrification in the country. Replying to tweet by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media claiming that the mammoth task of taking electricity to every village of India has finally been achieved, the Congress claimed that 80 per cent of electrification was done in the country when the Congress was in power.

On April 28, the Prime Minister tweeted, naming Leisang, a village in central Manipur's Senapati district, as the last one to receive electricity and said that 2018 would be remembered as a historic day in the development journey of India. “I am delighted that every single village of India now has access to electricity,” Modi tweeted.

However, terming the Prime Minister’s tweet as an old-fashioned way of saying lie, the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) has condemned the claim and said that the statement is a blatant lie. The Congress party in a release claimed that till 2014, when the UPA was in power, as high as 97% villages across the nation were already electrified under the scheme, Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY). Apparently, at the time of NDA’s succeeding at the centre, only 18 thousand villages were left out of the radar of the electrification. In this sense, the opposition Congress said that the NDA in the last four years has electrified only these 18 thousand villages which they belief is not a big achievement if it is true at all. The Congress claimed that till 2014, the former UPA had already completed 90% electrification of the villages out of targeted 26,000 villages. “Now the BJP-led NDA government is taking the credit of others work, besides renaming the scheme to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)”, said the Congress. Considering all these claims, the Congress has demanded the BJP-led NDA government to clarify  which are the villages they have brought under the achievement of the hundred percent electrification across the nation.