Uttar Pradesh, once the biggest roadblocks to the Centre’s complete electrification programme, will get close to Rs 1,500 crore grant as it finished the household electrification drive within the stipulated deadline of December 31.

The achievement came as a surprise to many as at the beginning of December, the state had faced a daunting task of energizing 55 lakh households.

A government official said the state overestimated un­electrified households. Also, houses with illegal connections have now been identified as electrified, helping in reducing the targets. The overall targets for the country under the scheme have also come down from the initially estimated 4 crore to 3.5 crore, and finally by the end of the year, to 2.49 crore.

The Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana, or Saubhagya, envisages providing energy access to all by March 2019 and includes release of electricity connections by drawing a cable from the nearest electricity pole to the household premise, installation of energy meter wiring for a single light point with LED bulb and a mobile charging point.

The Saubhagya scheme was launched on September 25, 2017, at a cost of Rs 16,320 crore including gross budgetary support of Rs 12,320 crore from the Centre.

The states that completed the scheme by December 31would be given an additional 15% grant by the Centre as incentive. The scheme is being funded to the extent of 60% by central grants, 30% by bank loans and 10% by states. 

Barring Rajasthan, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya, all states have achieved 100% household electrification.

On Monday, Uttar Pradesh, which hosted close to half of the targeted un­electrified households, announced achieveinmg100% electrification, a statement issued by the power ministry said.

Since the launch of Saubhagya, 74.4 lakh willing households have been electrified and the state government has declared saturation of all 75 districts. The state has launched a door­to­door campaign for any of those left out in un­electrified households.

The Saubhagya dashboard showed that of the 2,49,01,600 households that have been identified, 96.15% have been energized, while 3.85%, or 9,57,950, households are remaining.

Karnataka and Arunachal Pradsh attained full electrification on Tuesday. The power ministry expects to complete electrification of all targeted households by January 26. The ministry had earlier planned to complete the programme by Monday against the original deadline of March 31.

On an average, about seven lakh houses are being energised every week. Experts have said the newly connected households will get translated into growth in power demand within a year with the release of pent­up and fresh demand from rural areas.