Telangana government on Thursday, September 5, decided to provide free electricity to government-run educational institutions to impart quality education. The scheme will come into effect immediately, says a Government Order issued hours after Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka announced this at a function to mark Teachers' Day.

Vikramarka, who holds finance and energy portfolios, said the 'people's government' will provide free power to 27,862 educational institutions across the state. He said the government would reimburse the expenditure to be incurred by the electricity department for implementation of the scheme.

The modalities of the scheme have been outlined in the GO. The power distribution companies will create an online portal with logins given to respective departments of all government educational institutions.

The secretaries of the concerned departments will finalise the list of institutions to be covered under the scheme and include the same on the online portal. Monthly billing be done for each institution and will be displayed in the department's login.

A hard copy of the bill will be given to the respective institution in charge, showing consumption in units and billed value. The portal will also enable the generation of reports pertaining to the consumption, bill amount, historical consumption, billing, payments and balance etc., institution-wise, mandal-wise and district-wise and will be available to all the departments. The portal will be integrated with the Finance Department to enable the departments to pay the bills to TG DISCOMS using the budget provision.