Maharashtra’s Energy Department receives SKOCH Gold Award for Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana 2.0
Mumbai, 16th February 2025: The Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana 2.0 (MSKVY 2.) launched by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to provide daytime power supply to farmers for agricultural pumps, was awarded the prestigious SKOCH Gold Award for best performance in the energy sector. At the same time, MSEDCL’s Saur Gram Yojana received the SKOCH Silver Award. Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) Chairman and Managing Director Hon. Lokesh Chandra accepted the awards in New Delhi on Saturday.
The SKOCH Group gives awards for various schemes that have proved useful in the public sector. These awards are given based on the votes of the jury after rigorous examination by various experts. These awards for public sector schemes are considered prestigious.
The Mukhyamantri Saur Krishi Vahini Yojana 2.0 is being successfully implemented by state’s Energy Department and MSEDCL with help of Revenue Department under the coordination of Additional Chief Secretary (Energy) Abha Shukla. In this scheme, solar energy is generated in a decentralized manner and agricultural pumps are run on it. After the launch of this scheme in April 2023 by Hon. Devendra Fadnavis, the implementation is going on at a fast pace. So far, 49 projects have been completed and their capacity is 203 MW. This scheme will be completed by March 2026 and the dream of running all agricultural pumps in the state on solar energy will be fulfilled. Due to this, 16,000 MW of solar energy generation capacity will be created for agricultural pumps. This is the largest distributed solar energy generation scheme in the world.
MSKVY 2.0 will provide quality day time power to agricultural pumps and full fill the decades-old demand of farmers. Since electricity is available at very economical rates in this scheme, the cost of purchasing power by MSEDCL is reduced and the burden of cross subsidy on industries is being removed. Due to this scheme, an investment of Rs. 66,000 crores is being made by private developers in the state and 70,000 jobs are being created in rural areas. This is a game changer scheme in the energy sector.
Mahavitaran is developing 100 villages in the state under the Solar Village Scheme. In this scheme, by installing solar energy projects on the roofs in the villages, the electricity required for all the houses is generated in the village itself. Along with this, solar energy is used for everything like the Gram Panchayat office, street lights, Zilla Parishad schools, water supply schemes. Due to this, the electricity bill of the village becomes zero and it helps in protecting the environment. Manyachiwadi in Satara district has become the first solar village in the state. So far, six villages have become solar villages.
