Round the clock power to all households in Rajasthan was among the newly formed BJP government's top priorities, energy minister Gajendra Singh Khinvsar said in Jaipur on Monday.
“Round the clock power is being currently being provided to 22-25000 out of the 49000 villages. We plan to reach out to the rest of the villages,” said Mr. Khinvsar, during his first interaction with the media after taking charge.
“Now we are not saying this will happen in the next two days. It will take time but we will get on the job starting tomorrow,” he said.
Another “specific instruction” by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, the minister said, pertained to the provision of seven hours of electricity to farmers.
“Currently they are getting five and half to six hours. So starting tomorrow, we will start providing 6.5 hours of power in the morning and 7 hours at night,” he said.
He said the previous BJP government set up a lot of power plants but couldn't get even get to inaugurate any of them and the benefits of these plants accrued to the Congress government.
Mr. Khinvsar expressed concern over the accumulated losses of the power companies in the state and said it would be an uphill task reducing the losses.
“Our government left office with losses of power companies at Rs.15000 crore, accumulated between 2001 and 2008. But during the Congress government the losses mounted to Rs.71000 crore,” he said.
The minister said the government planned to reduce the losses primarily by a more efficient system of transmission and distribution.
“We will put in place a new audit system and a three-tier monitoring system to reduce the Transmission and distribution losses. Stopping power thefts are extremely important to compensate the losses since we cannot raise the power tariffs any higher,” said Mr. Khinvsar.
