Government plans to provide 24x7 electricity in two years

The Narendra Modi-led NDA government is not only readying to help neighbouring Bangladesh meet its power demands, it has plans to provide undulating 24x7 electricity to India, including all the villages and commercial as well as industrial units across the country in the next two years.

"Power is a basic necessity of people and given the encouraging production of electricity in the past one year we are sure that we will be able to provide all of India, including all the villages of the country, unhindered 24-hour power supply in the next two years. What is stupendous and has goaded us is the record power production to the tune of 23,000 mega watt has been added to the existing capacity in past one year," Union Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh told MAIL TODAY.

Singh was outlining the outstanding achievements of the Modi government in its one year of tenure, which the BJP is celebrating and taking as message of its competence across the country.

"Another record has been established in the field of laying of roads in the rural sector. We have achieved a rate of laying 110 km of roads everyday under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) which had come down to single figures under the previous government. At this rate, it is fathomable that we will achieve complete road connectivity of all the villages of India in a short time to come," Singh said.

The government, however, thinks the development plans would get a major fillip with the passing of the new Land Acquisition Bill, which when ratified would make acquisition easy for infrastructure projects.

Singh lambasted the Opposition for playing a politics of narrow interests over the Bill.

"The new Land Acquisition Bill hasbeen fashioned keeping in view the best interests of farmers. I have long been associated with farmers struggle and I know that they are extremely interested for the Bill to be passed as they know the reality of the promise of development the Bill contains. The Opposition has been exposed after Modi's Mathura rally in which farmers gave the government thumping support," Singh said.

"The engine of development can be restarted and the push to the GDP can be given in a big way through the Bill.

Farmers can be given complete and assured electrified and irrigation facilities such as canals when land is available for these purposes.

Moreover, the call of the hour is to divert the youth of around 3.5 crore rural-agricultural families to other productive professions or else the pressure on land will be such that farming will be abandoned for becoming the most unprofitable business," Singh said.

On the thorny issue of FDI in retail that has seen divergent voices emerging from within the BJP, Singh said the time had come to realise the dream of PM Modi's 'Make in India' vision.

"Even with FDI, a large portion of the wealth of the nation will be expatriated to foreign nations. The economy of the world had long ago started shifting from the West to the East: first Japan, then Korea and then to China. Now it is on the anvil to shift to India. They were past, we are now the future of world economy," Singh added.

(Mail Today Bureau)