After '15 years of development', Assam villages remain dark

In the Centre’s count of un-electrified villages in states, Assam languishes just below Odisha

BY Our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, May 13: In what belies the Congress' poll slogan of '15 years of development, 15 years of trust', a Central government report has indicated that Assam has the second highest number of un-electrified villages in the country.

As on April, 2015, the State had 2,892 un-electrified villages. In the last fiscal, 947 of these were connected with electricity.

Odisha had 3,474 villages not connected with electricity.

Other NE states also have sizable number of villages where there is no power connection. There are 1,578 such villages in Aruchal Pradesh, 912 in Meghalaya, 58 in Mizoram, 82 in galand and only 26 in Tripura.

Ahead of the elections, State Power minister Rakibul Hussain had said that the State would get 24x7 power supply from January this year. But that promise also remains a distant dream.

As on February 2016, a household in Assam, on average, got only 16.5 hours of electricity supply in a day.

According to the 2014-15 data, the average power unit consumption of rural household in the State was also as low as 1.71 per day. The power consumption of a household is one of the indicators of the State's economic health.

During the assembly election campaign, senior BJP leaders, including Prime Minister rendra Modi and party president Amit Shah had pooh-poohed Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's development slogan by listing the number of un-electrified villages in the State.

The 15 States/UTs which have achieved 100% village electrification as on 31-05-2015 were: Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Harya, Kerala, Punjab, Sikkim, Tamil du, Telanga, Chandigarh, Dadra & gar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Delhi, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry.

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