Chennai: After facing power shortage for the past eight years, Tamil Nadu has achieved power surplus status and has offered to supply 1,000 mw of wind power to other states but the farmers are angry over the Tangedco move.
With the state restricting release of agricultural power supply connection (free power supply scheme), farmers allege that over 10 lakh applications are pending since the year 2000 including over a lakh of farmers who have paid '50,000 deposit in the scheme.
“We are going to picket offices of Tangedco on August 12 seeking it to provide power supply to all the pending applications for agricultural supply immediately,” Tamil Nadu Vivasaigal Sangam general secretary P. Shanmugham said.
Mr Shanmugham wondered how come the state government claimed to have achieved power surplus status when lakhs of farmers are waiting for over 15 years for power supply connection. “The government’s decision to sell surplus power to other states is unacceptable. First power supply should be provided to all the farmers who have sought a connection,” he said.
According to Tangedco data, 4.3 lakh applications seeking agricultural power supply connections were pending as on March 31 this year. The agricultural connections were provided under seven categories. Of them, 2.37 lakh farmers were awaiting power connection under normal category, followed by 1.08 lakh and 0.83 lakh farmers waitlisted under the revised self financing scheme after paying the scheme cost of Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 each respectively.
As on March 31, 2015 there were 20.46 lakh agriculture consumers out of the total consumer base of 264.67 lakh in the state. Farmers allege that there was a steep fall in effecting power supply to agriculture consumers in the last 10 years.
In the last 10 years, agricultural service connection has increased by mere 15 per cent from 17.68 lakh in 2005-06 to 20.46 in 2014-15 while overall consumer base has gone up by 48 per cent in the same period.
“Agricultural service connections are effected every year based on the target given by the government and based on the application registration seniority,” said a Tangedco official.
The official added that providing power supply connection to all the waitlisted applications at one go would create huge financial implication on state exchequer as the power supply to agriculture is completely free.
One of the waitlisted applicants, S. Marimuthu, a farmer from Cuddalore said that in the absence of surface water and power supply connection, he was forced to use diesel powered pumpset to extract groundwater for agriculture purpose. “Input costs for paddy cultivation goes up when we use diesel pumpsets. But we are not getting adequate compensation for the produce,” he complained.
