90% villages in EKH lit up, SGH lags behind with 29%

SHILLONG: The Centre’s Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana is yet to light up 285 villages in Meghalaya, a status report of Garv Dashboard, a government website, showed.
Altogether 612 of the 912 villages in Meghalaya have been electrified under the central scheme. The report shows that 90 per cent of the villages in East Khasi Hills (106 of the 118 villages) have been lit up. It is followed by West Khasi Hills where around 75 per cent villages have been covered. Altogether 165 of the 221 villages have got electricity.
In East Garo Hills, 149 of the 257 villages (58 per cent) have got electricity and in Jaintia Hills, only 56 per cent of the villages, i.e 38 of 68, have been electrified. South Garo Hills has performed poorly with only 20 out of 70 villages (28.5%) been electrified till date.
The report also says till date, 859 of the 912 villages have been visited for the project.
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last address to the nation on Independence Day, the Centre has decided to electrify 18,452 villages in 1,000 days (by May 1, 2018).
The strategy for electrification consists of squeezing the implementation schedule to 12 months and also dividing village electrification process in 12 stage milestones with defined timelines for monitoring.
The report shows that of the 18,452 villages in the country without electricity, the scheme could bring light to 56 percent of the villages (10,290).