Progressive Democratic Front took strong objection to the State government not supplying enough power to the people in the State and demanded immediate measures to reduce power cuts.
They had written an open letter to the Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy explaining the present power crisis and seeking effective measures to overcome that.
The Guntur-Krishna Teachers’ Constituency MLC K.S. Lakshman Rao and Guntur-Krishna Graduates Constituency MLC-elect Boddu Nageswara Rao on Friday said that the State government’s inability to plan proper generation capacity in the State and allowing the natural resources to be diverted, had led to this power crisis situation.
The MLCs questioned the disparity shown between Warangal and Vijayawada in power cuts and wanted only two hours of power cut imposed as was being done in Hyderabad, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and Warangal.
The Natural Gas produced in the State has been diverted to Gujarat due to lack of foresight by the State government leading to shutting down of gas-based power generation units, they pointed out.
The State government had imposed additional Rs.6,000 crore last year in the name of additional fuel charges in power generation and now proposes to put an additional burden of Rs.9,000 crore on people, they said.
The PDF members releasing a copy of the open letter formally at the UTF Office here, they said that they would submit it to the Chief Minister on Monday and seek an all-party meet on the issue before any decision on the power tariff hike was taken.
Among the demands included withdrawal of tariff hike, supply of sufficient indigenous coal to thermal plants and stop importing from Australia to reduce production cost.
The APGENCO was slowly allowed to lose its importance and several of the projects were being privatised, the PDF members alleged.