Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, had announced a bouquet of schemes. Apart from making the cut on the GST for the EVs, the Finance Minister has proposed a “One Nation, One Grid” initiative. The Finance Minister, in her maiden speech expressed hope that the scheme will mainly focus on bringing affordable power to all states.
The electricity problem has been one of the major problems in India. Just a few years back, a lot of remote villages still do not have any access to electricity. The government must look into the matter of providing electricity to even the remotest villages.
According to government data, India has successfully provided electricity everywhere in India. However, the consistency of the electric power received remains a major question. As announced by Nirmala Sitharaman, the power reform is a much-needed one regarding the consistency of the provided electricity, and it has been so for the longest of time.
Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned that the power reforms such as the power tariff reform should be taken up soon by the government project to provide last-mile connectivity and electricity connections to all households in rural and urban areas. However, her scheme is an extended part of another initiative taken up the Indian government called the ‘Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana’ scheme.
The scheme is popularly known as the ‘Saubhagya’ scheme. The scheme was launched by PM Narendra Modi back in 2017 in September. After the scheme, the government has been successful with its scheme. Now that the 100 percent electrification target has been achieved, the concern is now shifted to providing consistent electricity at affordable rates.
A NITI Aayog review of the UDAY (Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana) has revealed that the government departments and local bodies collectively have run up the electricity bills up to Rs. 41,386 crore only in the first nine months of 2019-19.
