With Leisang village of Manipur connected to the power grid, every village in the country has been electrified as on April 28 this year. This claim by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has elicited scornful harrumphs from opposition parties, and with reason. After all, reaching this “100 percent rural electrification” target is nothing much to crow about for the present Central government, as Power Ministry data itself reveal that by October 31 in year 2013, almost 94 percent villages (5,61,613 villages to be exact) had been ‘electrified’. So the NDA has now merely completed 6 percent of the task that was remaining when its predecessor UPA was holding the reins at the Centre. What both the political dispensations mostly leave unsaid is that 100 percent electrification of villages hardly means electricity for all village households. Take the case of Assam, for instance. When a query was raised in the Assembly last month about the electrification status, Power Minister Pallab Lochan Das informed that the number of households in the State lacking power connection stands a little over 24 lakh. Since Assam has nearly 52 lakh households, clearly almost half the households in the State are still without electricity. This agrees with the Union Power Ministry data identifying Assam as one of the laggard States with the likes of Rajasthan, Bihar, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha — when it comes to electrification of households. The figure for Assam was shown to be only 55 percent households having electricity. This is the reality, and such proportions are not to be glossed over by misleading claims. In December last year, the Assam Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (APDCL) claimed to have met its target of “100 percent electrification of revenue villages”. However, it was admitted unofficially that around 160 villages were yet to be connected to the grid as these were either eroded, uninhabited or in forest areas. Last month the State Power Minister informed the Assembly that while 4,073 revenue villages have been electrified as on February this year, all such villages will be covered only in the ongoing 2018-19 fiscal.