Andhra Biggest Beneficiary in India Under Ujala Scheme 

The latest data furnished by the Minister of Power RK Singh claimed that Andhra Pradesh is the biggest beneficiary of the Union government Ujala scheme. This scheme is meant for promotion of energy-efficient LED street lights in the country. The data indicates that Andhra Pradesh tops the list with the highest number of installed LED street lights (29,47,706) under the program.

In response to a question on the issue, the minister furnished the data before the Lok Sabha in his recent written statement. Apart from Andhra Pradesh, the list mentions other states, such as Telangana, which got the second highest of 16,55,460 LED street lights. It was followed by-Uttar Pradesh (12,90,949 LED streetlights), Maharashtra (11,03,306), and Rajasthan (10,72,033). Collectively, Ujala has been successful in expanding energy access to the region and also brought the electricity bill down in those regions.

Previously, the government has successfully installed street lights under the SLNP (Street Light National Program), with support from state-run EESL Energy Efficiency Limited. Collectively, they have scaled up the adoption of LED lamps in the country. The scheme has been distributing LED bulbs under the distribution program since 2014. EESL continued to play a significant role in transforming the domestic lighting Market by distributing LED bulbs/tubes under the UJALA scheme after its launch in January 2015.

Since then, the EESL has brought LED adoption across India through the Ujala scheme. The scheme was introduced by the Ministry of Power (MOP) to increase the adoption of energy-efficient LED lamps in place of Incandescent Lamps (ICL) / CFL lamps to bring down the energy consumption in domestic lighting. As the price of LED lamps was much higher than that of ICL/CFL lamps, the major objective of the UJALA scheme was to bring down the price of LED bulbs through demand aggregation and bulk procurement.

The minister said that with the average household electricity bills down by 15 percent, the annual energy saving is equivalent to a week’s average earnings. He added that the domestic LED market has grown significantly beyond the UJALA program, with the industry selling over 1.15 billion LEDs, far exceeding the UJALA program’s target of 700 million LED units.

This year, as the scheme completes eight years, the recent parliamentary data on EESL as per the shared data shows the distributed number of LED bulbs to be 36.86 crore LED, 72.18 lakhs LED Tube-Lights and 23.59 lakhs Energy Efficient Fans under the scheme. Earlier this year, the scheme was estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 3.9 million metric tonnes per year, which is equivalent to removing around 4.7 million cars from the road every year.