Engineers’ federation demands review of country’s policy on electricity : The Tribune India

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Engineers’ federation demands review of country’s policy on electricity

PATIALA:The All-India Power Engineers Federation has disputed claims of Ministry of Power and some state governments of providing 24-hour power supply to all categories of consumers and demanded a holistic review of the country’s power policy if the government wanted to provide round-the-clock power supply at affordable rates.



Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 20

The All-India Power Engineers Federation has disputed claims of Ministry of Power and some state governments of providing 24-hour power supply to all categories of consumers and demanded a holistic review of the country’s power policy if the government wanted to provide round-the-clock power supply at affordable rates.

“As per latest figures, around 30 crore people of across the country do not have access to power so where does the question of surplus power arises. The claims of surplus power are highly misleading as a number of people without power is 30 crore, which is huge as per global standards.” the federation said.

The Central Electricity Authority in its report has claimed that India was expected to become “power surplus’ in 2016-17”. The data shows that the all-India power deficit has gradually been easing. From 8.7 per cent in 2012-13, the shortfall fell to 2.1 per cent in 2015-16. But these figures are based on the existing number of consumers where one fourth of the population is without power.

According to latest available figures available at the website of Deendayal Upadhya Gram Jyoti Yojana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh lead the list of the states where the maximum number of urban and rural households have no access to electricity. The percentage of urban and rural households in Bihar without power connection stands at 33 per cent and 87 per cent, respectively. The corresponding figures for UP are 19 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively.

The two states are trailed by Assam (16 per cent urban and 66 per cent rural), Jharkhand (12 per cent urban and 63 per cent rural) and Odisha (17 per cent urban and 52 per cent rural), respectively. The other states include Meghalaya, Manipur and Madhya Pradesh.

Federation spokesperson VK Gupta  said  the figures had put a question mark on the claims of the Union and state governments as there were significant disparities in the electricity connections in urban and rural areas across all states.

Some states such as Punjab , Haryana ,Gujarat and   Maharashtra  have signed more than required number of power purchase agreements (PPA) due to which the state-run power plants are forced to back down while states like UP and Bihar are facing load shedding as the power utilities have resource crunch to procure costly surplus power.

The Federation demands that states should review the existing long-term power purchase agreements as  discoms of these states are forced to pay fixed charges running into hundred of crore in case they are not able to utilise the power round the year and forced outage of its own thermal units.  

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