Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana (SKJY)

What is Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana?

Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana (SKJY) is a scheme of the Energy and Petrochemicals Department, Government of Gujarat. According to the Department's own scheme page, SKJY started in 2017-18 and its objective is to "provide good service to the consumers by providing quality power supply by replacing existing old dilapidated power wires / conductors and related goods of the agricultural feeders and if necessary by dividing the agricultural feeders."

Read plainly, SKJY does two things:

1. It replaces worn-out conductors and fittings on agricultural feeders, the medium-voltage lines that carry power from a substation out to farm pump sets.
2. It bifurcates agricultural feeders where a single feeder has become too long or too heavily loaded, splitting it into two.

The scheme is named after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and is written in Gujarati records as સરદાર કૃષિ જ્યોતિ યોજના. Readers also encounter it spelt Sardar Krishi Jyoti Yojana in Government Resolutions.

What SKJY is not. SKJY is not a subsidy, not a cash transfer and not a scheme with a beneficiary list. There is no form to fill, no eligibility certificate and no bank account to seed. It is an annual capital works programme funded to Gujarat's electricity distribution companies. This is the single most misunderstood thing about it, and it is the reason so many searches for "Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana apply online" find nothing.

Why the scheme exists

Gujarat separated agricultural and non-agricultural feeders long before most states, under Jyotigram Yojana from 2003 onwards. That separation solved the scheduling problem, villages could get 24-hour three-phase supply while farm feeders ran on a fixed daily schedule, but it left behind a very large stock of dedicated agricultural feeders, many of them built decades ago and now carrying far more load than they were designed for.

An aged agricultural feeder fails in predictable ways. Conductors sag and snap in wind. Joints heat up and cause single-phasing, which burns out three-phase pump motors. Voltage at the far end of a long feeder drops so low that a submersible pump will not start at all. Faults take hours to locate on a line that runs kilometres through fields.

SKJY targets exactly that stock. Replacing conductors and hardware restores the line's carrying capacity, and bifurcating a long feeder halves the length each half has to serve, which reduces both voltage drop and the number of farmers affected by any one fault.

Who benefits from Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana?

You benefit if:

• You hold an agricultural electricity connection in Gujarat served by a feeder taken up for renewal or bifurcation under SKJY.
• Your feeder is in the licence area of one of the four state distribution companies — PGVCL in Saurashtra and Kutch, MGVCL in central Gujarat, DGVCL in south Gujarat and UGVCL in north Gujarat.

You cannot apply, and are not eligible for any individual payment, if:

• You are a farmer looking for a cash benefit. SKJY pays nothing to individuals. Farmers seeking a personal benefit should look instead at Kisan Suryoday Yojana for daytime supply, at the state's schemes for new agricultural connections, or at solar pump schemes.
• You are a farmer wanting a new agricultural connection. New connections are released under separate schemes and a separate application process at the distribution company, not under SKJY.
• You are a domestic, commercial or industrial consumer. SKJY works are confined to agricultural feeders.
• You are an individual contractor without distribution company registration. SKJY work is awarded through the distribution companies' tender process to qualified firms only.

There is no income criterion, no land ceiling and no caste or category criterion in this scheme, because there is no individual selection at all. Selection happens at the level of the feeder, not the farmer.

How to apply for work under Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana

There is no citizen application. The real routes are these, and they are worth following precisely because they are the only ones that exist.

If you are a farmer whose feeder is in bad condition:

1. Write to your distribution company's subdivision office: PGVCL, MGVCL, DGVCL or UGVCL, depending on your district: describing the problem: sagging or snapped conductors, repeated single-phasing, low voltage at the tail end, or frequent trippings. Quote your consumer number and the feeder name.
2. Get the complaint registered and take the complaint number. An unregistered verbal complaint leaves no record, and feeders are prioritised from recorded fault and interruption history.
3. Get other farmers on the same feeder to file too. Loading and the number of consumers affected are what push a feeder up the priority list, so twenty complaints from one feeder carry far more weight than one.
4. Escalate to the Executive Engineer of the division if nothing moves, and then to the Superintending Engineer of the circle, in writing.
5. Raise it through the village panchayat or the district agriculture establishment, both of which feed local requirements into the distribution company's annual planning.

If you are a contractor or supplier:

1. Register as a qualified vendor with the concerned distribution company, meeting its financial and technical qualification norms for medium-voltage line work.
2. Watch the tender notices published by PGVCL, MGVCL, DGVCL and UGVCL, and on the Government of Gujarat's e-procurement platform, for SKJY conductor replacement and feeder bifurcation packages.
3. Bid against the specific package and execute under the company's supervision. Payment flows from the distribution company against the grant it has been sanctioned under SKJY.

How big is Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana?

Two independently published figures give a sense of the scale, and both are worth reading with their limits in mind.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline lists a Sardar Krushi Jyoti Yojana implementation project located at Gandhinagar, sponsored by the state government, in the transmission and distribution sector, with a project cost of USD 84.62 million and a period running from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2026. That is a single NIP entry, not the whole life of the scheme, which began in 2017-18.

Separately, a tariff petition filed before the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission records that the Government of Gujarat approved Rs 18.07 crore for FY 2020-21 under SKJY for maintenance of agricultural feeders in DGVCL alone, for strengthening the agricultural network to reduce interruptions and provide quality power supply to farmers. DGVCL is one of four distribution companies, so that figure is a fraction of the annual state-wide outlay.

The Energy and Petrochemicals Department publishes the consolidated Government Resolutions for the scheme, listed on its page as "Sardar Krishi Jyoti Yojana ALL GR". Anyone needing the year-by-year sanction figures should download that compilation, since annual outlays are set by GR rather than announced as a single headline number.

How to check whether work is planned on your feeder

1. Ask at your distribution company subdivision office whether your feeder appears in the current year's SKJY works list. This is a public works programme and the subdivision holds the district plan.
2. Check the Energy and Petrochemicals Department page at guj-epd.gujarat.gov.in for the scheme's Government Resolutions, which set out the year's sanction.
3. Read the distribution company's tender notices. A published tender naming your feeder or your subdivision is the clearest possible confirmation that work is coming.

Key facts at a glance

• Started: 2017-18
• Department: Energy and Petrochemicals Department, Government of Gujarat
• Executing agencies: PGVCL, MGVCL, DGVCL and UGVCL under GUVNL
• Work covered: replacement of old conductors and related equipment on agricultural feeders; bifurcation of agricultural feeders where required
• Individual application: none
• NIP project period: 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2026

Where a figure is not stated above, it is because the Energy and Petrochemicals Department has not published it as a single consolidated number. Year-wise outlays, feeder counts and circuit kilometres covered are contained in the scheme's Government Resolutions rather than on the scheme page.