A major challenge in India’s energy sector is the responsibility to meet the unmet as well as rising household energy demand – cooking and electricity. This challenge requires huge investment and fuel supply responsibilities.
Demand for clean energy in the form of LPG and electricity is going up rapidly at present. The demand for non-commercial energy of households like wood is declining and this is shifting to LPG and electricity.
Given this priority of providing energy to households, the Government has launched two schemes – the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) (previously Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidytikaran Yojana) for rural electrification and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana for providing LPG connections.
Table: House hold energy access as per 2009-10 NSSO 66th round
|
Energy form |
Rural (%) |
Urban (%) |
Total (%) |
|
Electricity |
67.3 |
93.9 |
75.9 |
|
LPG |
15.5 |
66.2 |
31.2 |
Source: Twelfth Five Year Plan
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana
The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana aims to provide five crore new LPG connections to BPL households in the country. It was launched in May 2016 at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh. The Cabinet allocated Rs 8000 crore (including a budgetary support of Rs 2000 crore) for the scheme. The Scheme provides a financial support of Rs 1600 for each LPG connection to the BPL households.
Ujjwala Yojana will be implemented over three years – 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19. There are nearly 14 crore household LPG connections as on August 2016.
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)
India was able to halve the number of households who doesn’t have electricity over the last few years. Still, nearly 240 million people have to get electricity who mostly reside in remote villages.
Government has launched Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) for rural electrification targeting nearly 18000 un-electrified villages. It was launched on 25th July 2015 in place of the existing Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) as a rural electrification scheme.
The main objective of the scheme is to electrify all villages and to provide electricity to all households. It has an outlay of Rs 76000 Cr for implementation of the projects under which Government of India shall provide Grant of Rs 63000 Cr. The main target is to electrify about 18452 (old target 12,597) villages by May, 2018. As on August 2016, 10086 villages were electrified.
Separation of distribution networks between agricultural and non-agricultural uses, to reduce load shedding, strengthening local transmission and distribution infrastructure etc. are part of the scheme.
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