The All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) on Friday targetted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah over contradictory tweets on village electrification.
The AITC posted two tweets — one of Modi, in which he claims that every single village now has access to electricity and another of Amit Shah where he says that people don’t have access to even basic facilities like electricity and asked who among them is lying.
"Two tweets. One from the Prime Minister of India. One from the @BJP4India President. One of them is lying," said AITC in a tweet.
After addressing public meeting in West Bengal's Purulia on June 28, Shah said, "Mamata govt has failed on all fronts & people don’t have access to even basic facilities like clean drinking water, electricity & ration. No development has taken place for the common people but only goons of TMC have flourished."
When the BJP-led government launched its version of the village electrification scheme -- the Rs 76,000-crore Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) --- there were an estimated 18,452 unelectrified villages. An additional 1,275 villages were added to the list subsequently.
According to official estimates, about 3.14 crore rural households, or 17% of total 17.99 crore rural households, still do not have any access to electricity. The highest number of them are in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand and Odisha.
To take electricity to all households by end 2018, the government has launched the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana or the Saubhagya scheme. Of the Rs 16,320 crore needed for the task, Rs 12,320 crore has already been provided in the Union Budget.
