NEW DELHI (TIP): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said the Government plans to offer affordable electricity to all households in the country in the next five years. “More than 1,00,000 villages in the country have been provided in recent years,” Singh said while addressing a seminar on Energy Access organised by the CII and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Prime Minister Singh also said that the Government is taking steps to offer cooking gas to all rural households. At present, 12 per cent of 119 million rural households use LPG for cooking. All 240 million households, using six subsidised cylinders in year, would require about 25 million tonnes of LPG. “Extending of distribution network may require some time.

Rural households would need subsidy for electricity and LPG,” Singh added. The Government is working on a mechanism to provide subsidy to targeted individual. Singh said that the Government is looking to put in place a mechanism where subsidy would be directly transferred to bank accounts of the beneficiary. In addition, solar power contributes 12 per cent to India‘s total electricity installed capacity. “We hope to light up around 20 million rural homes by using solar power by 2022,” Singh said. India targets to install 55 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2017.