By IANS,
Mumbai : India’s ambitious rural electrification programme would be complete within a couple of years, Union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde announced here Wednesday.
“Rural electrification will be complete by 2009,” Shinde told reporters, while admitting that the country faced a power shortage of nearly 70,000 MW.
He added that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called a meeting of all chief ministers in later this month to discuss various strategies to tide over the power crisis.
A meeting of chief secretaries and power secretaries would also be held, apart from discussions with non-conventional and independent power producers to ensure that the shortage is overcome by 2012, Shinde said.
The minister said that a proposal for changes in the hydroelectric power policy was also before the cabinet.