Over 3 lakh households in Odisha yet to get power
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29/05/2018
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Hindu (New Delhi)
For around 3,00,000 households in eight districts of south Odisha, a power connection still remains a dream.
The eight districts -- Ganjam, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Boudh, Koraput, Rayagada, Nabarangpur and Malkangiri – are under the power distribution company SOUTHCO. According to SOUTHCO, the non-electrified villages are located in remote hilly jungle terrain, some of them in Maoist-infested areas.
As per information provided by SOUTHCO, till May 14 this year, 3,04,435 households in these eight districts are waiting to be electrified. The highest numbers of non-electrified households numbering 83,616 are in Ganjam, the home district of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
The number of non-electrified households in Koraput district is 48,043. Similarly Kandhamal has 42,413 households without electricity, their number in Nabarangpur is 39,105, Gajapati (21,944), Rayagada (37,971), Malkangiri (12,118) and Boudh (19,215).
Funds received
Till October 10, 2017, around 3,66,365 households in these eight districts had no power connection. With the launch of the ‘Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana’ on October 11 last year, the electrification process got a fillip. SOUTHCO prepared an expenditure estimate of around Rs. 694 crore for electrification of all the left-out households and sent it to the government.
Till now the power discom has received Rs. 15.67 crore for the purpose. This has sped up the electrification process.
According to SOUTHCO general manager P. K. Choudhary, the Centre has fixed a target to provide electricity to all households by the end of December 2018. But the Odisha government has decided to electrify all households in the State by Gandhi Jayanti this year.