Rs 2600 crore sought from Centre for HVDS

BY V L Srinivasan

Published on March 13, 2006

HYDERABAD: Seeking Rs 2,600 crore from Centre for executing the High Voltage Distribution System (HVDS), Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Sunday advocated creation of a comprehensive mechanism for providing quality power to agriculture, domestic and other sectors in the state.

The HVDS would help in improving the voltages in supply of power to pumps and reduce the transformer failures since there will be smaller transformers catering to two or three pump sets.

In the last two years, the State Government implemented HVDS by energising 1,72,668 pump sets and was planning to cover the remaining 22 lakh pumpsets at a cost of around Rs 5,651 crores with financial assistance from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) by 2012.

He said that the power utilities have been providing quality power supply at a reasonable tariff to industrial consumers by providing around 1,000 exclusive industrial express feeders.

Rajasekhara Reddy, who reviewed the power supply position and implementation of HVDS with AP Transco officials over telephone from Delhi, asked the latter to constantly monitor the position though there was slight improvement in view of the rains in recent days.

The Chief Minister cautioned the officials that complaints were still being received from Nizamabad, Mahaboobnagar, Nalgonda, Prakasam and other areas regarding power supply and directed them to ensure that that they do not recur.

Recalling that the State recorded the maximum peak demand of 8,210 MW on February 17, which was 7.84 percent higher than the maximum demand reached during the same period last year, he patted the officials for meeting the demand by supplying 170 million units per day.

Sales to agricultural sector during January to March, which was 3,377 MU in 2002-03 and 3,798 MU in 2004-05, was expected to cross 5,000 MU this year. With the Government planning to conduct `Rythu Chaitanya Yatras' from April 2, Chief Minister asked the departments like revenue, power and Panchayat Raj to collect feedback from the general public.

The Chief Minister wanted the district collectors to monitor regular power supply position in their areas on day-to-day basis and report to him problems regarding supply.

The Chief Minister desired that power supply to industrial sector should not be disturbed as far possible, despite priority being given to domestic and the farm sectors.