Need white paper on rot in UP's power sector: Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal claims that he has seen some mind-boggling and terrible data on the situation

A white paper is needed on the Uttar Pradesh power sector to expose the "deep rot" of past 15 years, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday, claiming he has seen some "mind-boggling and terrible" data on the situation.

The state will finally ink this week the 24x7 'Power for All' (PFA) document, which aims to provide round-the-clock affordable electricity.

"Uttar Pradesh is the only state which has not signed Power for All (agreement with the Centre). I am delighted to share that on April 14, 2017, on birth anniversary of Baba Saheb Ambejkarji, we shall be executing power for all document with Uttar Pradesh...In Lucknow," Goyal said at the launch of a Rural Feeder Monitoring Scheme and Urja Mitra application and portal.

"Some of the statistics which came out in last two weeks are mind-boggling and terrible. I cannot even share it with you," he said.

"Some of the figures and statistics that have come out, have strengthened my feeling that we should come out with a white paper on state of affairs in Uttar Pradesh so that the people know that deep rot that has been set into the system for the past 15 years."

He expressed the hope that with the change of guard in Uttar Pradesh, the Power Ministry would be able to make it a model state even in the area of electricity and power supply.

Goyal said: "I am glad that my officials and official of UP started working on it (the agreement) on election counting day (March 11) itself. The whole system was activated on the evening of March 11, 2017.

"You see the power of good governance and change that the same officials, who until March 10, were unable to enter into that agreement. Now it is clear that they were able to do it but possibly the politically masters were holding them back."

Talking about the Rural Feeder Monitoring Scheme, the minister informed that at present around 30,000 rural feeder meters are connected to national power portal and the remaining 75,000 will be connected by December, 2017.

The Rural Feeder Monitoring Scheme is to monitor the quality and quantity parameters of power supply in rural areas of the country.

The entire data shall also be hosted on National Power Portal on real time basis and may be accessed by various stake holders through web services.

The Urja Mitra launched today by the minister, is an application which provides a central platform (web-portal www.Urjamitra.Com as well as mobile app) for state power distribution utilities to disseminate power outage information to rural as well as urban consumers through SMS/email/push notifications.

Consumers can also view real time power outages in any part of the country, lodge complaints.