Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he announced the ‘Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana’, and termed it a “jumla’’ (gimick) ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
“Pradhan Mantri ji’s ‘jumlas’ soar to the Sun. Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a fresh target of installing rooftop solar for one crore houses. The ground reality is that not even 10 lakh houses have rooftop solar installations in the past 10 years of BJP rule,” he said, attacking the Prime Minister.
Claiming that the Modi-led government at the Centre earlier made a “false’’ promise of installing 40 GW of rooftop solar capacity by 2022, Kharge, who is also the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, said, “The status check of Modi government’s grand announcements is 70 per cent of that target of 40 GW remains unfulfilled. Out of that, only 2.2 GW are installed in homes. Energy generated from residences was only 1/5th of the installed capacity.”
“After its grand failure, the Modi government changed the target to be completed by 2026, without any new funding in the scheme. Election season means BJP’s jumla season,” he wrote in a post on X, referring to the upcoming general elections.
On Monday, the Prime Minister announced ‘Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana’ with the target of installing rooftop solar on one crore houses.
He had said this would not only reduce the electricity bill of the poor and middle class, but will also make India self-reliant in the field of energy.