The Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) a web portal designed to monitor the progress of household electrification in India has been launched.

When fully operational, the progress of India’s household electrification program will be available live on the portal, along with information showing the progress that states are making toward achieving their electrification goals.

The portal was launched by Minister of State for Power and New & Renewable Energy R.K. Singh. It can be accessed online at http://saubhagya.gov.in/.

“Through this online platform every state can feed in the current status of the progress of their electrification works, hence enabling the creation of a system of accountability for state utilities/ DISCOMs and helping to increase their viability. Further, seven states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Mizoram, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, and Assam have all given their requirements to the Power Ministry for funds under the Saubhagya program, which would be released soon for aiding in their respective electrification works,” said Singh.

The Saubhagya web portal has a feature for village electrification camps and, in line with that, distribution companies (DISCOMs) will organize camps in villages and clusters of villages to facilitate the completion of application forms on-the-spot and the completion of other requisite documentation to expedite the release of electricity connections to households.

The Saubhagya program was launched to electrify all willing households in the country in both rural and urban areas using solar power. The program has a project outlay of ₹163.2 billion (~$2.5 billion) and Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) of ₹123.2 billion (~$1.89 billion).

Recently, the National Power Portal (NPP) – a centralized hub for the collation and dissemination of information on the Indian power sector, was launched to facilitate the online capture and input of information from generation, transmission, and distribution utilities in the country on a daily, monthly, and annual basis.

These online portals are necessary to create transparency about progress made. It will also create accountability on the part of the implementing agencies and others involved.

Image Credit: http://saubhagya.gov.in