The Kerala government will declare the state "fully electrified" on May 29 in Kozhikode. State power minister MM Mani said on Thursday that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will announce the achievement.
“The state has got 1.25 crore KSEB consumers, except 1000 families, the state has given electricity connections to all. Among the 1000 families who have not got the connections are 150 tribal families who live deep inside the forests, who did not get connections due to pending cases,” MM Mani said.
In a press conference at Thiruvananthapuram, the Minister also said that the LDF government in their first year of governance has given electricity to 4.7 lakh new customers. He said that according to central government norms when at least two public utilities in a village and 10% of the households in the village are electrified, then the village can be declared fully electrified. He said in that respect the state can be declared fully electrified.
The total cost of the Total Electrification Scheme was Rs 174 crore, of which Rs 37.34 crore was spent from the asset development fund of MLAs.
“Of the 1.5 lakh beneficiaries, about 1.25 lakh belonged to BPL category. It includes 32,000 SC applicants and 17,500 tribal families. Most of them are even so financially poor that they could not complete the wiring works in their house. So Kerala State Electricity Board Employees unions helped them to do those works,” the minister said.
Full electrification was made possible by the government through a wide campaign and by simplifying the procedures to get an electricity connection. Applicants were able to apply for connections even through, SMS or WhatsApp.
In many of the places where it was difficult to draw the power lines KSEB introduced solar plants and provided power connections to 1,600 houses in 22 colonies in that way.
When the state will be declared fully electrified, 1046 houses will still remain without electricity because they reside deep inside the forest and have court cases and NoC issues raised by the Forest Department.