Telangana State buys power at Rs 8.50/unit

On the instructions of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, energy department bought 14 million units of power on Sunday at a cost of Rs 8.50 per unit in view of the emergency as against the normal price of Rs 3.50 per unit from the national and the southern grids.

The government also purchased power on Monday but the exact quantum would be known on Wednesday. The CM had accused Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu of denying the rightful share of power from AP and blamed him for the worsening power situation.

Mr Rao asked the energy department to tap all sources to meet the im-mediate power requirement. “To overcome the power shortfall, the government has taken short-term and longterm measures.

To meet the immediate power shortfall, the government purchased 14 million units of power from private parties on Sunday and will continue to purchase till the power situation eases,” a CMO spokesman said.

The government was forced to look for alternate power sources in view of growing protests from farmers, upset industrialists and angry domestic consumers.

“There is an additional 8 million unit demand in the state which has forced the government to purchase at a high cost,” he explained.

As against the demand of 6,000 MW, the state has 4,000 MW of power.

Mr Rao admitted to power shortage and also made it clear it would take three years to overcome the crisis. While the power situation is precarious, 30 per cent deficit rainfall this monsoon till date has added to the state’s woes.

Barring parched Mahbubnagar district, which for a change received fairly good rainfall, nine other districts Ranga Reddy, Medak, Nizama-bad, Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda and Hyderabad received deficit rainfall. In all, 330 mandals out of 464 are hit by deficit rainfall.

The state received 498.1 mm of rainfall as against the normal of 715.1 mm from June 1 to September 30, an overall shortfall of 30 per cent. Out of a total 464 mandals, 24 mandals recei-ved excess rainfall and 87 normal rainfall.

With kharif season coming to an end, there is also a slight drop in the cropped area. Against the normal of 40.38 lakh hectares, the total area sown is 38.84 lakh hectares, a shortfa-ll of 1.54 lakh hectares.

Congress leaders Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and Gandra Venkata Ramana Reddy on Monday said Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had promised sufficient power supply to the agriculture sector, but farmers have not been getting power for more than two to three hours.

“In many areas, crops have started withering. There is a drin-king water scarcity on account of failure of pumping mains. Added to this, farmers have also not got loan wai-vers as promised. In-stead of blaming somebody, the Chief Minis-ter should concentrate on purchasing power to tide over the crisis,” they said.

They added that it was due to government apathy in providing su-fficient diesel that am-bulances were not able to respond to emergency in several places.

Senior TD leader Revanth Reddy said Mr Chandrasekhar Rao had promised to set up dedicated power lines to draw power from Chhattisgarh.

Reacting to the criticism, TRS MLCs Karne Prabhakar, Ramulu Naik and MLA Rasamay Balakishen said the Opposition leaders should introspect as to who was responsible for crisis.

“Instead of blaming the AP government which is denying Telangana its righ-tful share in power generation from Krishnapatnam, the Telangana Opposition leaders are blaming the state government. This only highlights their bias,” said the TRS leaders.

They also blamed the previous Congress government for failing to set up more power stations in Telangana and concentrating only on the Seemandhra region. They said even before the Telangana state came into being, the 450 MW Sileru Hydel power station which was in Telangana was merged with Seemandhra by the Polavaram Ordinance.