'No power shortage in Telangana'

Hyderabad, May 11: Telangana Energy Minister, G Jagdish Reddy today claimed that the government succeeded in meeting the complete demand for 5200 mw power and is capable of supplying 12,500 mw power at one go. Addressing a press conference at Secretariat along with officials here, he said that the department expeditiously had taken up steps to resolve power disruption problem due to rains which resulted in about Rs 5 cr loss. Chief Minister, K Chandrasekhar Rao efforts with support of alert staff could improve power production he said. While the previous governments set up 640 power production units , the TRS Government has set up 236 power producing units, he stated. Now the department is able supplying uninterrupted 9 hr power supply to the farmers, the minister said. However, he alleged that the Andhra Pradesh Government failed to respond to his letter for the rate for purchasing 300 MW of power. He said before the formation of Telangana State, the generation capacity was 4,365 MW which has now increased to 5,400 MW with the commencement of 600 MW power supply from Bhupalpally and few MW has been added through renewable sources. The Minister said that when the tenders had been called for power purchase, the Andhra Pradesh Government has quoted the rate of Rs. 5.30 per unit while the other private companies has quoted rate of Rs. 4.63 per unit, hence the tenders has been finalised in favour of the company which has quoted lowest rate, then AP said that it will give one paise less on which the Telangana government accepted and sent the indent for supply of 300 MW of power. But they have not responded. He said that still the Telangana government is prepared to purchase power from AP if they give at the lowest rate. Reddy said that heavy damaged has been caused to the infrastructure causing loss of Rs. 5.5 crores due to recent heavy rains and 90 per cent of the damages has been repared. Jagadish Reddy said that they have fixed 33 KV poles at 68 places damages, 11 KV Poles at 1423 places damaged out of which 1415 rectified, 2546 LT poles fixed out of 2580 damaged and DTR (Distribution Transformers) damaged at 186 places out of which 180 rectified, he said.