The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Power to all villages in five years: Sayeed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 27, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Power to all villages in five years: Sayeed

By Our Staff Reporter

The Union Minister for Power, P.M. Sayeed, commissioning the seventh unit of NTPC Ramagundam on Sunday as the Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, looks on.

GODAVARIKHANI (KARIMNAGAR DT.), SEPT. 26. Lauding the State Government for introducing reforms in the power sector, the Union Minister for Power, P.M. Sayeed, has said that the reforms should be carried out with a human face.

Speaking after commissioning the 500 MW seventh unit of NTPC, Ramagundam, here, on Sunday, the Union Minister hoped that the Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, would carry out reforms in a pragmatic approach for progress in the power sector.

Transmission losses

Expressing concern over transmission and distribution losses reaching a whopping Rs. 22,000 crores in the country, he underlined the need to reduce them and to provide quality and assured power supply to consumers at an affordable price. Despite generating 1.13 lakh MWs of power, the country was still short of 40,000 MWs of power supply, he said. To bridge the demand-supply gap, it was targeted to generate additional one lakh MWs of power by the year 2012, he added.

Stating that over one lakh villages and about 56 per cent of households had no power supply in the country, he said the Government on priority would provide power supply to all villages in the next five years.

He said the per capita consumption of power in the country was only 582 units against the world average of 2,000 units. The Government was according priority for opening power projects in the public sector.

YSR's appeal

The Chief Minister urged Mr. Sayeed to allot 50 per cent of the power generated from the seventh unit exclusively for the State. He said the NTPC Ramagundam unit had progressed steadily from 600 MWs to 2600 MWs installed capacity and was supplying power to all southern states.

He also urged the Minister to allocate the share for construction of Yellampalli (Sripada sagar project) for utilisation of Godavari waters for the NTPC unit.

The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, S. Jaipal Reddy, urged the Minister to announce the NTPC Simhadri second phase power project and supply total power to the Andhra Pradesh State only.

The Minister for Endowments, M. Satyanarayana Rao, and the Peddapalli MP, G. Venkata Swamy, recalled their role for the setting up of the NTPC power plant at Ramagundam by staging a dharna in front of the late Prime Minister, Morarji Desai's residence in late 1970s.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh

News Update

Stories in this Section