Mumbai: Mahavitaran’s 'Krishi Urja Parv’ from March 1 to April 14 to implement the Agricultural Pump Power Policy, a concept by Energy Minister Dr. Nitin Raut, received overwhelming response from farmers. To spread awareness about the policy to villages and farmers, 6216 awareness programmes were conducted by Mahavitaran under the 'Krishi Urja Parva’.
As many as 12.15 lakh farmers have started their journey towards relief from electricity bill arrears, and 2.92 lakh farmers have been completely paid their agricultural electricity bills. Farmers have also received relief of up to 66 per cent of the total arrears and have paid Rs.1,184 crore to become arrear free. The 34 districts and gram panchayats in the state have secured 66 per cent of the Rs 845 crore collected under the policy.
The 44,250 pending new connections from April 1, 2018 have been commissioned so far. To supply electricity to agricultural pumps during the day, agreements of 1181 MW capacity have been signed with decentralised solar power projects.
The process of providing new electricity connections to agricultural pumps in the state was hampered since April 1, 2018. Apart from taking strategic decisions on the issue, 44.36 lakh agricultural consumers in the state will be relieved of their electricity bill arrears, speed up the rural development economy, claim funds for various works of agricultural power plants and set up agricultural solar projects to supply electricity to agriculture.
Mahavitaran's Chairman and Managing Director Vijay Singhal, Directors Bhalchandra Khandait, Satish Chavan, Ravindra Sawant, Sanjay Taksande, Executive Directors Arvind Bhadikar, Prasad Reshme, Yogesh Gadkari, Jt. Managing Director Dr.Naresh Gite (Aurangabad), Govind Bodke (Konkan), Regional Director (incharge), Ankush Nale (Pune)and Suhas Rangari(Nagpur) and Chief Engineers along with all other engineers and employees have been instrumental in organising the programmes.
