Mumbai/New Delhi: In its 2014 election campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised to bring development, and specifically electricity, to all of India’s villages and homes. However, by then, almost all of India’s villages (97%) already had an electricity connection, according to data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA). This left the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance-II (NDA-II) to simply finish the job.
It did this, amid much fanfare, in April 2018 when Leisang in Manipur became India’s last village to be electrified. The NDA-II has electrified 20,910 villages, some in India’s most remote locations, but the bulk of the work had been done by previous regimes—the United Progressive Alliance-II (UPA-II) electrified 80,189 villages and UPA-I 52,611 villages.
