A parliamentary panel has recommended that a village should be declared electrified only after providing power connections to all households there.
At present, all those villages with 10 per cent families with electricity connection can be declared electrified under the governments rural electrification programme.
The Centre has electrified 14,125 villages out of 18,452 identified electrified villages in the country under the rural electrification programme so far, as per its web portal.
“The present definition does not reflect the true picture of universal access to electricity status in the country and therefore..it should be changed as such that a village should be declared electrified only when all the households of the village are electrified,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy said in its reports tabled in Parliament today.
The panel further said that a village should not get a tag of being electrified in any case when the household coverage is less than 80 per cent.
It further said that the all hydro power in the country irrespective of their capacities should be considered as renewable source of energy.
At present, hydro power project up to 25 MW capacity are treated as renewable energy and can avail various incentives under the green energy initiatives of the government.
It also suggested that with a view to make hydro power tariff more levelised, these should be provided long term finance (up to 25 years).
The panel also pitched for segregation of commercial and technical losses to reduce quantum of aggregate technical and commercial losses.
It also said that a separate pool of funds for research activities in the power sector be established on the lines of corporate social responsibility from the profits of the PSUS in energy sector.
Source: PTI
