One-hour power cut to continue in city

HYDERABAD: The state government on Thursday attributed the current power crisis to the failure of monsoon rains and said that the one-hour power
cut in the city limits would continue for some more time. "Any additional power cut is generally due to grid failure," legislative affairs minister K Rosaiah said in the assembly.

He said during peak time, the demand was 9398 MW while the supply was 9058 MW. On an average, the demand was over 8000 MW a day. He said that the government proposed to take up 22 power projects with a combined generating capacity of 17,588 MW at an estimated cost of Rs 92,426 crore in the state.

The issue came up during question time in the state assembly on Thursday when MIM member Akbaruddin Owaisi wanted to know the demand-supply gap. Rosaiah said that the government's promise of supplying nine-hour free power to farmers from June 1 was not kept due to poor monsoon rains. At this stage, opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu charged the state government with making false promises. Responding to this, Rosaiah said the Congress would be in power for the coming five years and that it would implement it any time.

However, taken aback by Rosaiah's statement, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy intervened and said that he did not believe in going back on the promise. "I am aware that if we do not implement it by November or December, we will lose credibility." He refuted the opposition charge that the government had given the assurance without a proper feasibility study. "We were of the view that hydel generation would begin from June and that it would not be difficult to implement the promise but rains played truant and forced the government to defer the implementation by a few months."

Reddy said they were hopeful of getting 500 MW from VTPS but due to delay in stabilising the new unit the promise could not be kept on time.

The CM said the government was buying power from the Power Trading Corporation at Rs 7.50 to Rs 9.50 per unit while the same if generated by APGenco would cost only Rs 2.25. Hence, efforts were on to increase the generation capacity to 13,000 MW in the next four years, Reddy said.