New Power Minister Veerappa Moily on Wednesday said another massive power outage would not happen again and that he had convened a meeting of the Chief Ministers of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on August 6 to discuss the situation.
In addition to these States, the Administrator of the Union Territory of Chandigarh had also been invited for the meeting. “We thought it fit and appropriate to convene a meeting of the Chief Ministers of all the affected eight States and one Union Territory on August 6 afternoon,” Mr. Moily told reporters after taking charge. The Secretaries and Principal Secretaries of all the States would meet the same day to discuss issues arising out of the crisis.
The country faced one of the worst power crises in its history when the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids collapsed on Monday and Tuesday, affecting about 600 million people.
No to blame games
Mr. Moily said he did not want to start any blame game and accuse any State of overdrawing. His first priority was to initiate reforms in the power sector as nothing could be achieved without the cooperation of the Centre or the States.
The Minister noted that there was need to stabilise the grid. “For that, we will work out a proper strategy. I don’t want to start my innings with a blame game. We will work for short term and long term solutions.”
“I always like challenges in life and issues of electricity transmission and fuel are very sensitive. Problems will crop up. At the same time, how we combat these problems becomes a challenge. We are very much capable and capacity has been built. This is not the end of the journey. We need to do more and that is why we are here,’’ he said.
