Hyderabad: AIMIM legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi painted a grim picture of the power situation before the formation of the state, and extolled the achievements of the BRS government in addressing the 2,700 MW peak-hour power deficit. He opined that the gloomy picture that the then CM Kiran Kumar Reddy had painted has been proved wrong.
This, he said, was made possible as the BRS government invested in new projects, and minimized transmission and distribution losses. Telangana is the only state providing free power for 24 hours for agriculture and as the white paper acknowledges, the agriculture sector got 19 hours of power, an improvement from the six hours of power that was the norm before 2014. The situation of farmers was pathetic and even industrialists had agitated as nearly 10,000 units were shut down, he said.
Justifying power companies taking loans, he said, “The loans arose because of the non-payment by government departments. The delay in granting loans led to delay of the Yadadri power project. The non-cooperation of AP had led the state to buy power at higher charges. There is a pending case in the Supreme Court for the Rs 12,940 crore that is due from AP. The Centre instead of addressing this situation even imposed a fine for late payment of power bills. The state did not install metres to agriculture motors and had let go the 0.5 per cent exemption to the FRBM limit it could have availed. Moreover, the Centre’s condition for compulsory use of 10 per cent imported coal put an additional burden. This white paper is silent on that also.”
The government has not given any clarity on the gruha jyothi scheme. The subsidy needed to give 200 units of power under the scheme is around Rs 4,800 crore per annum. The government should come out with a time frame for implementing it, Owaisi said.
The REC (Rural Electrification Corporation) and PFC (Power Finance Corporation) have stopped disbursement of loans to power utilities in Telangana from April, 2022 by insisting on a tripartite agreement between the government of India, Telangana and the RBI. The status of this is not clear, he said.
