Power crisis: Power ‘plan’ adopted by Telangana Legislative Assembly

It urged the Centre to allot AP’s share of power in Central quota to Telangana, if AP continues to deny power to Telangana ignoring the Centre’s directives in this regard.

It urged the Centre to include Telangana state in the Centre’s scheme to supply 24x7 round-the-clock power, similar to what has been extended to AP, Delhi and Rajasthan.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao who moved the resolution, said the AP government has been violating all orders with regard to sharing of power issued by the then undivided AP government, Central Electricity Authority, Southern Load Despatch Centre and even its own AP Electricity Regulatory Commission. He said the farmers and people in Telangana are facing severe problems on account of shortage of power and urged the Centre to come to the rescue of Telangana by ensuring power supply from AP.

However, the ruling party was forced to modify the contents of the resolution after Opposition TD strongly protested against the inclusion of “Due to reluctance of AP government in giving power to Telangana,” which was removed later. The TD members said the resolution has ‘political overtones’ which is against the spirit of a unanimous resolution.

“Telangana has been facing acute shortage of power as AP government has denied about 1,980 MW of its share so far. When we tried to produce power from Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam projects, they raised a hue and cry, complained to the river water management boards, and influenced them to issue orders, directing us to stop power production. Despite the projects having required water levels for power production, the AP CM N. Chandrababu Naidu has hatched a conspiracy to block power supply in Telangana to see that the crops in Telangana are damaged,” Mr Rao said.

He said the AP government’s denial of power has resulted in the Telangana government spending Rs 2,500 crore to buy power from the open market and whatever sources was available.

He wondered whether the Telangana government had the money to achieve this target. “As far as I know, it requires about Rs6 crore to produce 1 MW. If 20,000 MW has to be added, it needs Rs

1.2 lakh crore. From where will you get these funds? For the BHEL plant alone, to produce 6,000 MW, it requires Rs 36,000 crore. Similarly, it requires one acre to produce 1 MW. To add 20,000 MW, we need 20,000 acres. Has the government worked on these issues?” Mr Owaisi asked.

He also questioned the claims of the Telangana government on securing 1,000 MW of power from Chhattisgarh, which is yet to commence operations in the plant from where it had promised to supply power.

The Chief Minister replied, “NTPC has funds and will take care of that. The land has been identified in Khammam. For BHEL, we are confident of getting loans from PFC and REC. The land allotted to BPL Power earlier was cancelled and re-allotted to BHEL.”

A case is pending in the court in this regard and we are awaiting judgement.”

Mr Owaisi also questioned the claims of TRS government that the TS would become ‘power-surplus state’ in three years stating that the demand for power in TS would increase phenomenally in three years.

However Mr Rao clarified, “Once we achieve the 20,000 MW target, it will be easy to face any kind of power demand in the future. For that, we have prepared both short-term and long-term plans.”