On Sunday midnight, as the world will welcome the Year 2018 with lots of hopes, it will be a different celebration in thousands of villages across Telangana.

As the clock will strike 12.01 am, an old dream of Telangana farmers will become a reality as round-the-clock power supply to all the 23 lakh agricultural pump sets will begin.

After the success of two rounds of trial run this year, Telangana Government was all set to start the round the clock uninterrupted and quality power supply to the farmers. "This is our New Year gift to the farmers", said Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, putting his stamp of approval to the ambitious program.

With this Telangana will be the first State in the country to supply free power to the farmers round the clock. A few other states were supplying free power to farmers but nowhere it was being supplied for 24 hours.

Telangana State Power Generation Corporation and Transco CMD  D Prabhakar Rao after reviewing the preparations with the other top officials of power organizations said that the 24 hour power supply will result in gradual increase in the demand and it will reach 11000 MW by the month of March.

He also discussed about the load bearing due to the 24-hour supply and the strategy to be adapted when there is more load.

As the pump houses of the lift Irrigation Schemes will also start functioning from June next there will be more demand for power. A strategy will be evolved to meet the overall demand of power, he said.

Till the formation of Telangana state the power supply to the farming sector was erratic but after the formation of the state it was increased to 9 hours a day. However the Chief Minister decided to make it uninterrupted.

Accordingly, Transco, Genco, SPDCl, NPDCl have made arrangments. Rs 12,610 Crore was spent to strengthen the distribution and supply systems.  From 17th June round the clock power supply to 9.58 lakh pump sets was started  on experimental basis in the district of Medak, Nalgonda and Karimnagar.

In November a few more districts were brought under the experiment.