Brainstorming session on power situation today

MAHARASHTRA'S POWER MUDDLE

Finally Maharashtra's top political leadership is waking up to the huge power shortage which state is facing as one day's brainstorming session on this issue has been planned at the state guest house Sahyadri on Wednesday.

The issue of how to expedite the various private power generation projects entangled in the various legal, environmental and procedural complexities is going to be on top of the agenda.

Apart from Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his cabinet colleagues, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar, Union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and other political bigwigs from the state will attend the meeting .

Maharashtra is facing a power shortage of over 6,000 Mw and apart from some windmill project, not a single megawatt of capacity was added since 1994 which has created the present day crisis.

The state government meanwhile depended heavily on Enron's 2,100 Mw Dabhol power project.

In 2001, the project first ran into trouble when the state-owned power utility, the erstwhile MSEB refused to buy power from company, claiming that, its rates are too high. Subsequently, Dabhol project collapsed with Enron.

Despite the Centre, the state government and various financial institutions pouring thousands of crores of rupees into the project, they have not been able to revive the project completely.

It is still running on ad-hoc basis due to non-availability of fuel and old cranking machinery, which frequently breaks down.

In 2005, the Maharashtra government signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with six independent power producers (IPPs) to generate 12,500 Mw of power which included the Tata Power Company (TPC), Reliance Energy Limited (REL), Jindals, Essar, Ballarpur Industries among others.

Apart from Jindal's 1,200 Mw coal-based project in Ratanagiri district, no project has been able to make any progress on the ground. Most of the projects are plagued with problems like the state government's failure to allot land, get environmental clearances, fuel linkages among others.

When contacted, Maharashtra Energy Minister Dilip Walse Patil said, "There is going to be a structure discussion on state-owned power companies, role of private sector, opportunities in non-conventional energy and others. We will discuss it with officials and experts from these fields and try to find short-term, medium term and long term answers to Maharashtra's power crisis."