Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai on 2 June 2026 announced that the state has been selected for the PM Surya Ghar Excellence Award for its performance during the 'Month of Solar' campaign under the Centre's rooftop solar scheme. Writing on X, Sai said Chhattisgarh secured the second position nationally in the category of states with a medium consumer base for the highest number of vendor registrations.

'It is a matter of great pride and joy for Chhattisgarh,' the Chief Minister wrote, congratulating the state's Energy Department, the Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA), power distribution companies and associated institutions. He added that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, the state remains committed to building an urja aatmanirbhar tatha harit Chhattisgarh (energy self-reliant and green Chhattisgarh). The post tagged the Prime Minister and the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

Context

The recognition stems from the 'Month of Solar' campaign organised under the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, the Union government's flagship rooftop solar initiative. The campaign tracks state-level execution metrics such as vendor onboarding, consumer applications and installations.

Chhattisgarh's second-place finish among medium-consumer-base states places it alongside front-running peers in operationalising the scheme's vendor ecosystem, a prerequisite for scaling household installations across districts.

Policy backdrop

The PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana was launched by the Union government in February 2024 with the goal of equipping one crore households with rooftop solar systems and providing up to 300 units of free electricity each month through subsidised installations. The scheme is implemented in partnership with state nodal agencies and discoms.

In Chhattisgarh, CREDA serves as the implementing agency, coordinating with vendors, certifying installations and processing subsidies. The scheme sits within the broader arc of India's National Solar Mission, first launched in 2010, and the Centre's wider target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel electricity capacity by 2030.

For a state that has historically anchored its power economy in coal, the rooftop push marks a deliberate diversification. Chhattisgarh is among India's largest coal producers, and progress on distributed solar adds a consumer-facing layer to its energy transition.

Stakeholders and impact

The immediate beneficiaries of strong vendor registration are households seeking rooftop installations, who depend on an active pool of certified installers to access subsidies under the scheme. A larger vendor base typically shortens waiting times and improves price competition.

For state discoms, accelerated rooftop adoption brings both opportunities and challenges, lower daytime demand from solarised consumers, but also new requirements for net-metering infrastructure and grid balancing. Renewable energy vendors, meanwhile, gain a predictable pipeline of certified work under a centrally backed scheme.

The Chief Minister's framing of the award as collective recognition, naming the Energy Department, CREDA, discoms and partner institutions, signals an intent to keep inter-agency coordination at the centre of the rollout.

What's next

Attention will turn to the conversion of vendor registrations into actual household installations in the coming quarters, the metric that ultimately determines the scheme's reach. Subsequent campaign cycles under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy are expected to track installation numbers and subsidy disbursal more closely.

The state's 2026-27 budget cycle and any fresh allocations to CREDA and solar infrastructure will indicate how Chhattisgarh plans to sustain momentum beyond the campaign window. With the Centre targeting one crore rooftop installations nationally, state-level league tables of the kind that produced this award are likely to become a recurring feature of India's solar push, and a marker of how coal-belt states recalibrate toward distributed renewables.