NEW DELHI: India needs a nearly sixfold jump in pace of electrification if the targets set under the Saubhagya scheme announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently are to be met.The government will have to electrify about 2.7 million households every month to cover more than 40 million households in the next 15 months, as per the target laid under the scheme. The current rate of electrification is just 475,000 households per month, according to data available with the power ministry.In the past few weeks, the government has been consistently electrifying more than 120,000 households. The rate is much higher than that seen earlier but still less than a fifth of the rate required to meet the Saubhagya scheme targets. As per the data, in September 486,924 households were given connections, up from 447,112 households in August and 338,569 in July.The Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana , or Saubhagya scheme, worth over Rs 16,000 crore for universal household electrification, will cover a total of 30 million households, 25 million in rural areas and five million in urban areas.The electricity connection to households includes release of electricity connections by drawing a service cable from the nearest electricity pole to the household premises, installation of energy meter, wiring for a single light point with LED bulb and a mobile charging point. In case the electricity pole is not available nearby from household for drawing service cable, the erection of additional pole along with conductor and associated accessories shall also be covered under the scheme.The Saubhagya scheme will take at least a few months to kick off since the states will have to submit their detailed project reports to the Centre. Projects under the scheme will be sanctioned on the basis of detailed project reports or DPRs to be submitted by the states. There is no upfront allocation of funds under the scheme.Project proposals shall be prepared by the state and sanctioned by an inter-ministerial monitoring committee headed by Union power secretary Ajay Bhalla. The electrification works under the sanctioned projects shall be executed by respective distribution companies through turnkey contractors or departmentally or through other suitable agencies capable of doing this work as per norms, the Union power ministry had said.“The work is proposed to be undertaken in mission mode. We may face some hurdles but contractors would gear up. Billing could be outsourced if discoms desire so. Different models can be examined and ultimately smart and prepaid meters can be brought in,” a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.Acloser look at the data available on the power ministry’s Garv portal showed that the household electrification is being carried out in all the states including more than 100,000 each in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which together account for 45% of India’s unelectrified villages. However, the pace may not be enough considering the stringent timeline of December 2018, months ahead of the ensuing assembly polls.