Along the heavily fortified Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir, seven villages in a remote part of Bandipora district will get electricity for the first time as massive efforts to bring them on the power grid are nearing an end.
The seven villages — Kilshi Pain, Maz Gund, Saradab, Gund Gulsheikh, Malangam, Abdullan and Forest Block — are expected to be connected to the region’s electric network by the end of November, said officials and engineers involved in the project.
“It will be for the first time that these villages will get electricity,” Muzafar Mukhtar, Superintending Engineer (Electric), Bandipora, told media. He said the efforts to install the infrastructure and bring these villages on the electricity grid were underway on a “war-footing”.
Another engineer of the power development department said 80 per cent work had been completed and the rest would be completed by end of the next month before the road connectivity gets snapped.
The seven villages are located in Bandipora’s Tulail valley, a virgin landscape of pine trees and meadows, which is one of the remote corners and least developed parts of the Kashmir valley. It has no mobile phone connectivity and roads were constructed only a decade ago.
Shahid Choudhary, Deputy Commissioner, Bandipora, said the project had been a “big challenge”. He said the villages would be temporarily electrified using generators till the transmission line from Gurez sub-district, where Tulail is located, to Bandipora district headquarters is put in place.
The electrification of the seven remote villages was undertaken under the Central government-sponsored Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, the scheme designed to provide rural electrification.
The efforts to connect the seven villages, spread over 21 habitations, with the electricity grid includes installation of 1,775 poles, 43 km of 11 kV line and 31 km of LT line. The officials said at least two habitations could not be electrified “because they are too close to the Line of Control”.
