Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday said the continued poor performance by Central Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), resulting in a shortfall in power supply, would only lead the people of Tamil Nadu to suspect a “concerted conspiracy” to plunge the State in darkness.
In her letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the wake of sudden and unexpected deterioration in the power supply situation in the State since the second week of November 2013, she urged him to direct the Ministries of Power and Coal to take immediate effective steps to ensure that power plants under the control of Central agencies maximised their generation and restore fully the supply of power to Tamil Nadu. The Chief Minister said the sudden and unanticipated drop of about 2,500 MW could be directly attributed to dismal output from Central Generating Stations and Central PSUs, such as the NTPC, the BHEL, the Indian Oil Corporation and the Coal India Ltd. This had led to resumption of widespread load shedding in the State.
“The people of Tamil Nadu find it difficult to believe that the Central Generating Stations, including the joint venture unit under the management of the NTPC, as well as the units under trial production executed by the BHEL could all perform so poorly at the same time,” she said.