Report sought from TS for its inclusion in ‘power for all’ scheme

The efforts of the Telangana government for the State’s inclusion in the Centre’s “24x7 - Power for All” programme bore fruit with the latter sending an eight-member team here on Monday to guide the State authorities in preparing a detailed project report.

According to official sources, the Central team led by Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Power, Jyoti Arora, comprised officials from the Ministry and the Central Electricity Authority (CEA). The Central team held lengthy discussions with authorities of the Energy Department and officials of the generation and transmission corporations and two power distribution companies.

The Central team was learnt to have suggested to the State government officials to send them the detailed project report at the earliest so that it could be taken up in the next few months. The State officials have assured the visiting team of preparing and sending the report by April-end. The team led by Mr. Arora also called on Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma in the evening.

The “Power for All” programme envisages supply of round-the-clock quality, reliable and affordable power to all domestic, commercial and industrial consumers within a fixed time frame and also ensures adequate supply to the agriculture sector daily. The Centre’s decision to include Telangana in the programme follows Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s pursuance of the matter with the Prime Minister and other functionaries at the Centre after Andhra Pradesh was selected for the scheme last year.

“Under the project, the Centre extends technical and financial assistance to the State in capacity addition, improving energy efficiency by reducing transmission and distribution losses and encouraging energy conservation with the help of new technologies,” official sources stated after the meeting with the Central team.

The State authorities explained to the Centre the present demand-supply gap of about 3.5 million units every day in spite of some scheduled load shedding to agriculture and industrial sectors. The State also has the highest number of pump-sets, over 18 lakh, in the country.

Based on the energy consumption in Telangana region during the last five years, the Centre had shared power in the ratio of 53.89: 46.11 between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the bifurcation act.

However, AP had been denying Telangana its share of power generated in upper and lower Sileru hydro-electric and Krishnapatnam thermal generation stations, besides scrapping some power purchase agreements.

Centre sends eight-member team to guide State authorities