GARV to keep track of rural electrification leap

The Union government has decided to launch the second phase of its rural electrification scheme to monitor power supply in about 600,000 villages in real time. Earlier, the government’s focus was limited to the un-electrified villages. It has now decided to keep tabs on power supply to each household.   Officials said the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) was in the final phase of designing the GARV-II monitoring system. Once the system is in place, it will provide a picture of how state governments are spending funds for electrifying villages. It will also provide details of metering, supply and outages for all households. The central government had appointed around 400 field engineers in the first phase of Grameen Vidyutikaran (GARV-I), which was launched on October 14, 2015.