Agencies
Mumbai, April 29:
All villages in India have been electrified 12 days ahead of a deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government said on Sunday, which could give the ruling BJP a boost ahead of a general election in 2019.
Modi said on Sunday that April 28, on the evening of which a remote village in the northeast became the last to be connected to the grid, would be remembered as a “historic day in the development journey of India”.
“Yesterday, we fulfilled a commitment due to which the lives of several Indians will be transformed forever!” Modi wrote on Twitter, as various ministers in his government took to social media to congratulate him.
Government data showed that all of India’s 597,464 census villages have now been electrified. When Modi took office in 2014, there were some 18,452 villages without electricity.
The government considers a village electrified if it has basic electrical infrastructure and 10 percent of its households and public places including schools, local administrative offices and health centres have power.
The World Bank said in a report last year that globally 1.06 billion people had no electricity, with India and Nigeria topping the list of most power-deficient countries.
