Free electricity connections to Assam villagers help save fuel

GOLAGHAT (ASSAM): The flagship programme of providing free electricity connections to poor villagers in Assam has substantially reduced highly subsidised kerosene consumption and resulted in multi-fold increase in household incomes, according to an on spot survey of six villages.

Bnadoi Saikia, 55, a widow and resident of Halwa Gaon in Golaghat district near Kaziranga National Park, said that after she got a one-point electricity connection, her monthly consumption of kerosene reduced from 30 litre to 3 litre.

“Now I also weave ‘gamochha’ (a thin hand-woven cotton towel) at night for extra income. Earlier it was not possible under the kerosene lamp,” she told ET. Saikia works in local tea gardens and earns about Rs50 per day. She pays an electricity bill of about Rs100 per month.

“Earlier, my monthly kerosene bill was over Rs600, which has now shrunk to Rs42,” she said. The entire village, which has 80 BPL (below poverty line) households, gets subsidised supply of electricity for 18 hours a day under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY).

The UPA government’s flagship scheme provides free connections to BPL households but richer section of the village have to bear the actual cost, Lalit Sharma, project manager of Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB) said.

“We have erected two substations in the region each catering to about 1.5-2 lakh households in 400 villages where electricity bills of BPL households is also subsidised under RGGVY,” Sharma said. Electricity is supplied to BPL households at Rs2.35 per unit while relatively richer families pay the rate of Rs3.15 per unit.

(The writer was in Golaghat on the invitation of PIB)