Hyderabad: Free power for both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh is being promised by almost all political parties and some are also hinting at stretching the populist policy to nine hours or more.
This is despite the fact that the state is currently unable to fulfil the seven hours of free power promise made earlier and the power sector is staring at a huge financial crisis with no hope of getting back nearly Rs 13,000 crore spent on additional transportation of fuel (claimed as FSA), another Rs10,000 crore dues from various government departments and total losses of roughly Rs 40,000 crore.
Power sector experts say that these poll-time promises are being made just to lure voters and have slim chances of being implemented.
In fact, the promise of free power to be continued in Telangana state or to stretch it by a couple of hours will be difficult as Telangana is expected to see a huge power shortage and has the maximum number of borewells.
Former advisor to Planning Commission (Energy), Government of India, Ismail Ali Khan said, the situation was only set to worsen and increased free power might merely be “political talk”.
“Free power already has a major impact on Telangana region as it has the maximum number of pumpsets. The power crisis will also be more in Telangana as it will only have Kothaguda and Bhopalapally to cater to its needs.
Hydro power again will remain a contagious issue unless equitably distributed and therefore Telangana will become more dependent on central generating stations. And, then the discoms have huge burden of losses ” he said.
Meanwhile, though the state government had directed the discoms to purchase additional power at higher costs since 2008, the discoms have not even got the full agricultural subsidy amount from the state government.
A large chunk of the amount has been pushed on commercial and LT industry consumers each year in the form of cross subsidy as well as to all other categories in the form of FSA (Fuel Surcharge Adjustment).
“If the political parties want to continue with the present policies, then their promises are false. The power sector has been financially distressed due to the defective policies of the central and state governments, failure of the private sector, lack of actual estimate of agricultural consumption etc. Free power is possible only if all of these are dealt with; but still, it sounds impossible,” said power sector expert, Venugopal Rao.
