Nagla Fatela Controversy : When Light Thrown On An ‘Electrified’ Village Showed Up A State’s False Report

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech gave an oops moment to the government, specifically the power ministry. Modi mentioned a village, just three hours drive from Delhi which had been without power for 70 years but was now among the 10,000-odd villages that have been electrified under the rural electrification drive of the government. This village was Nagla Fatela in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh.

Unfortunately for the government, the media decided to drive down to the village and the Indian Express found that Nagla Fatela was not electrified, causing the government much embarrassment. But how did that goof-up happen in the first place? Documents uploaded on the power ministry website show that the central ministry appears to have been taken for a merry ride by the state government.

The Indian Express report noted that around 150 houses in Nagla Fatela had electricity but that was from illegal connections from a transformer meant to run tubewells but were paying the Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd. (DVVNL) for it.

Here’s how the sordid story panned out.

Way back in November 2013, a meeting of a state-level standing committee attended by no less than the chief secretary, the principal secretary, energy, and other senior officials signed off on a list of un-electrified villages that were to be taken up under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) during the Twelfth Plan period (2012-2017). Nagla Fatela was one of them.

This list was drawn up reportedly after field surveys and presentation of detailed project reports by the four discoms (distribution companies) of Uttar Pradesh. The state government report claimed that Nagla Fatela had no houses electrified and that the transmission line had zero load.

In January 2014, the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC), a central government entity agreed to allot funds to electrify the villages in the Uttar Pradesh government’s list. A tripartite agreement is executed between REC, the state government and the discoms under the scheme.

In late 2014, the National Democratic Alliance government redesigned the RGGVY and renamed it the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY). Villages with population below 100 were brought under its ambit, feeder segregation was done and the definition of an electrified village was changed to mean power reaching all houses.

On 30 October 2015, the DVVNL wrote to the REC about progress under RGGVY/DDUGJY. A table shows that energisation of Nagla Fatela had been completed. What’s more, the DVVNL also provided an Infrastructure Verification Document with a detailed mapping of transformers, electric poles and connections.

Based on this report, the union power ministry released details of the electrification work of the village on its GARV app, which tracks electrification of villages in real time. Someone writing the Prime Minister’s speech decided to highlight the case of this particular village. And set off a chain of events that blew apart false claims made by the Uttar Pradesh government, or at least the officials of one of its discoms.

The REC has now issued a show cause notice to the managing director of DVVNL asking him to explain how a village declared as electrified remains without power. The notice also asks the DVVNL how it can take money for illegal connections tapped from pump sets. What answer the DVVNL gives and how the state government responds will be interesting to watch.

But the central government needs to learn a lesson from this as well. It needs to set up a robust verification process to ensure that it does not have more egg on its face in future, especially when it is driving an initiative in areas that are within the domain of state governments. It might be a good idea for the power ministry to somehow independently verify if all the villages that are shown to be electrified in the GARV app do, actually, have power.