The Narendra Modi-led NDA government is not only readying to help neighbouring Bangladesh meet its power demands. It also has plans to provide 24x7 electricity to India, including all the villages and commercial users, as well as industrial units across the country, in the next two years.

"Power is a basic necessity of people and given the encouraging production of electricity in the past one year we are sure that we will be able to provide all of India, including all the villages of the country, unhindered 24-hour power supply in the next two years.

"What is stupendous and has goaded us is the record power production to the tune of 23,000 mega watt has been added to the existing capacity in past one year,” Union Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh told Mail Today.

Chaudhary Birender Singh, Union Rural Development Minister, said power is "a basic necessity".

Singh was outlining the outstanding achievements of the Modi government in its one year of tenure, which the BJP is celebrating and taking as message of its competence across the country.

“Another record has been established in the field of laying of roads in the rural sector. We have achieved a rate of laying 110 km of roads everyday under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) which had come down to single figures under the previous government. At this rate, it is fathomable that we will achieve complete road connectivity of all the villages of India in a short time to come,” Singh said.

The government, however, thinks the development plans will get a major fillip with the passing of the new Land Acquisition Bill, which when ratified will make acquisition easy for infrastructure projects.

Singh lambasted the Opposition for playing a politics of narrow interests over the Bill.

“The new Land Acquisition Bill has been fashioned keeping in view the best interests of farmers. I have long been associated with farmers struggle and I know that they are extremely interested for the Bill to be passed as they know the reality of the promise of development the Bill contains. The Opposition has been exposed after Modi’s Mathura rally in which farmers gave the government thumping support,” Singh said.

"The engine of development can be restarted and the push to the GDP can be given in a big way through the Bill. Farmers can be given complete and assured electrified and irrigation facilities such as canals when land is available for these purposes.

"Moreover, the call of the hour is to divert the youth of around 3.5 crore rural-agricultural families to other productive professions or else the pressure on land will be such that farming will be abandoned for becoming the most unprofitable business,” Singh said.

On the thorny issue of FDI in retail, which has seen divergent voices emerging from within the BJP, Singh said the time had come to realise the dream of PM Modi’s ‘Make in India’ vision.