Recently Prime Minister announced ‘Power for All’ in 5 years time. Well let us hope the Govt. would be able to keep its promise, as its earlier promises have not kept apace. Today there are still more than 1 lakh villages (as per records) in India which are not electrified, being around 17% of the total number of villages.
The worst 5 states where a huge number of villages are yet to be electrified are:
Orissa 44.2%, North-east : Arunachal Pradesh 43.2%, Tripura 42.8%, Meghalaya 40.7%, Bihar 38.7%,
These represent huge populations which still live without electricity. The Govt. estimate is around at least 350 million people.
However this is a conservative estimate, because there are villages which just fall of the records. For example, official statistics say that in Tamilnadu there are no unelectrified villages, however there are always hamlets which have been ignored, because these are too small and do not constitute a village. Kilaparadi is a tiny hamlet of around 70 families (300 persons) in Dharampuri District, who have been living in the hills for last four generations, without electricity. Whenever they demand electricity from the Govt. they are asked to move to the plains in the main village. However people living in the village, scheduled Tribe of Malayalis (translates as mountain dweller) feel they are mountain people and would not like to move to plains.
There are a large number of such hamlets which just do not count as villages and hence have not even been included in the 1 lakh unelectrified villages identified by the Govt.