Dear Readers,

The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana has recently been in the news and could be important for your exams.

DDUGJY is a flagship scheme which aims to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to every rural household in the country by 2022. This article will look at the objectives, background, implementation and advantages of this scheme.

Objectives

· To facilitate electrification of all villages.

· Feeder separation to ensure enough power to farmers and regular supply to other consumers.

· To improve sub-transmission and distribution network to make the quality and reliability of supply better.

· Metering to reduce losses.

Background

· It was launched on 25 July 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for power sector reforms in rural India with a view to ensuring uninterrupted electricity supply to farmers and rural households.

· The rural agricultural and non-agriculture consumers of the country are mostly serviced through the local distribution network. Several rural areas of the nation suffer from shortage of electricity supply and as a result, the distribution utilities have to resort to load shedding, thereby affecting the power supply to both agriculture and non-agriculture consumers.

· DDUGJY becomes more important because the demand for power in rural India is rising day by day due to better living standards and hence, augmentation of rural infrastructure has to be regularly undertaken.

· The investment in the distribution network is poor because of bad financial health of distribution firms. Thus, in order to increase the quality of supply, the distribution network has to be strengthened.

· DDUGJY will help to improve the commercial feasibility of power distribution as it would satisfy the need for metering of all classes of consumers.  

· The programme has an outlay of ₹76,000 crore for implementation of the projects under which the Government of India will provide a grant of ₹63,000 crore.

· Projects worth ₹14,680 crore have already been approved and projects totaling to ₹5,827 crore out of this have been approved for Bihar.

· Owing to this programme, an agriculture-centric state like Bihar will benefit from works of feeder separation. New lines of thousands of kilometres will be laid and hundreds of new substations have been put under consideration.

· This initiative will ensure a boost in agricultural productivity and electrification of all households.

Implementation

· The scheme will be implemented on turn-key basis. The turnkey contract will be given by the concerned utilities by e-tendering as per the prescribed Procurement Policy, Standard Bidding Document and Technical Specifications regulated by the nodal organization.

· Projects under the initiative will be completed within two years from the date of issue of Letter of Award (LoA) by the entity, when turnkey implementation is being applied.

· For execution on partial departmental basis and once approved by the monitoring committee, the project needs to be completed within 30 months (24 months for implementation and 6 months for placement of awards for supply and services) from the date of communication of approval of the committee.

· If the utilities are unable to complete the projects within the stipulated time period due to circumstances beyond their control, the Monitoring Committee is authorized to grant time extension based on merit in exceptional cases.

· Utility will establish a dedicated team for implementation of projects at district and Utility/State level and also provide necessary manpower and infrastructure, like office, logistics, etc.

· An officer of the rank of Chief Engineer or General Manager or above will be designated as the Nodal Officer from the dedicated team at the State level.

· The Nodal Officer will be responsible for implementing the scheme as per the prescribed instructions and guidelines, providing all the necessary information like physical and financial developments related to the project, increasing awareness, redressing public grievances and arranging to get necessary clearance from the State.

· A Project Management Agency (PMA) will be put in place utility-wise to help them in managing the project. Government of India will provide 100 per cent grant towards expenditure incurred on PMA in accordance with the provision in the scheme, i.e., up to 0.5 per cent of the cost of works. The Utility has to bear any cost beyond 0.5 per cent from its own resources.

Advantages of the Scheme

· All houses and villages will be powered by electricity.

· Boost in agricultural yield.

· Growth in the business of small and household enterprises which will lead to higher employment.

· Better services in the sectors of health, education and banking (ATM).

· Better access to radio, telephone, television, mobile and internet.

· Improved social security due to greater availability of electricity.

· More access to electricity in schools, panchayats, hospitals and police stations.

· Increased opportunities for more development in rural areas.  

These are the important points about this scheme. If you can understand these well, you will be able to attempt questions pertaining to this scheme with greater ease.

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