‘SAUBHAGYA’ PROGRAMME LAUNCHED IN MEGHALAYA

Meghalaya has become the latest state to become a participant of the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) programme, which aims to provide last-mile connectivity to all willing households in India by 2018. The programme was launched on April 20, 2018 by the state’s Chief Minister Shri Conrad K Sangma and Shri R K Singh, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power and New & Renewable Energy, in the presence of Meghalaya Power Minister, Shri James P K Sangma.

Under the programme, there will be no upfront fee for availing electricity connection as well as no charges for poor households.

Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, and Jammu and Kashmir to join the Saubhagya programme. In Meghalaya, there are 139,267 unelectrified households as of today. The Saubhagya rural electrification programme was launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi in 2017 with the goal of providing electricity connections to all households, including the most remote villages, by the end of 2018.

The national Saubhagya programme was launched at a total cost of Rs 163.20 billion ($2.54 billion), including Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) of Rs 123.20 billion ($1.92 billion) from the central government. To ensure the success of the programme, the Saubhagya web portal was launched late last year to monitor the progress of household electrification.

Source: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com