UP, central govt officials meet on power crisis in the state

The Uttar Pradesh government today raised the issue of short supply of coal and lower supply from the central power pool as main reasons behind the electricity crisis in the state.
The issue was raised during a high-level meeting between the top officials of the state government and senior officials of the Centre, Rural Electrification Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, NTPC, Power Grid and Central Electricity Authority held here, according to an official statement.
Initially, Union Minister of State for Power and Coal Piyush Goyal was expected to hold a detailed discussion with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on power related issues, but Goyal's programme was cancelled due to unspecified reason.

The Centre and the state have been indulging in blame game over power crisis in the state.
Yadav had been repeatedly blaming short supply of coal and low supply of power from the central pool, as against the alloted quota, as major reasons behind power crisis in the state.
On the other hand, in September, Goyal had said that non- cooperation of the UP government and poor law and order situation were responsible for power crisis in the state.

"It is unfortunate that we have 71 MPs from the state, but we are unable to do anything on power problem in their areas due to non-cooperation of the state government," he had told reporters through video conferencing.

During the today's meeting, Principal Secretary (Power) Sanjay Agarwal said that UP has the generation capacity of around 16,527 mega watt, but as units set up in the state sector have aged, the average plant load factor was only 60 per cent.
He said that to meet the increasing demand of power in the state there was a need to set up new power generation plants.
Agarwal emphasised on the need of allocating coal to government and private sector plants in accordance with their generation capacity.
He also raised the issue of less than 60 per cent coal supply to private projects set up in UP as against their agreement and said that supply of coal should be increased before monsoon.

It was also emphasised that considering the geographical situation of the state brining imported coal was costlier.
Agarwal said that since June availability from plants of NTPC has declined drastically and central generation units remained closed due to shortage of coal.
According to the statement, Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan expressed surprise that even though allocation from central sector to UP increased by around 16-20 per cent in different months, the power received increased only by 3-4 per cent.
He said concrete arrangements have been made to increase power supply up to 21,020 mega watt by 2016-2017 as against 10,983 MW at present.