State ignores Central advisory on power to agriculture sector

Union Government bats for conservation of groundwater

The Ministry of Power has issued an advisory to all States to restrict power supply to agricultural consumers to eight to ten hours a day to conserve groundwater. However, Telangana was opposed to it as it took pride in extending the initiative free of cost to 2.3 million farmers in the State since January 1 last year.

Reacting to the minutes of the conference of Power and Non-Renewable Energy Ministers of States at Gurugram in Haryana, the Chairman and Managing Director of Transmission and Generation corporations of Telangana, D. Prabhakar Rao, told The Hindu that the State government had already taken a decision to go ahead with the programme and there is no change in its stand as on date. This, despite an annual subsidy of ₹4,890 crore at the rate of ₹415 crore a month given to the sector by the government, he said.

Increased consumption

He also said the 24x7 supply had increased power consumption by 17% over normal.

The consumption was 16,000 million units (MUs) a year before implementation of the scheme but rose to 21,000 MUs afterwards.

At the conference, Telangana shared its monitoring system to ensure round-the-clock power supply. All States were asked to put their monitoring system in place by December.

The conference had agreed on 24x7 power supply to all consumers, except agriculture, and felt it was a challenge before the Ministry of Power. Telangana and Maharashtra governments informed that single portal for rooftop solar plants is already operational in their States and that the Confederation of Indian Industry had come forward to promote rooftop programme in Telangana. Technical assistance must be provided to implementing agencies for improvement in the execution of the programme.

‘Saubhagya’ programme

Among other challenges flagged at the conference were meeting increased electricity demand which is bound to go up after successful electrification of all villages and more than 25 million households under ‘Saubhagya’ programme. The sector could be sustained only if distribution companies (Discoms) remain viable. Reduction of losses by Discoms, improving collection efficiency, shifting towards pre-paid metering and accounting for each unit of electricity supplied were the measures necessary for sustainability of the sector.

Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu informed that coal supply constraints is one of the major reasons for low plant load factor at plants in their States.