On March 15 next, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will unveil plans for fulfilling his poll promise of ensuring enhanced hours of power supply to all categories of consumers by October this year. SP had promised 16 hour power supply in rural areas and 22-24 hour supply in urban areas and power cut free state by 2019-20.
Akhilesh Yadav will complete four years in office as chief minister on March 15, surpassing his record of his father Mulayam Singh Yadav. Though Mulayam Singh Yadav held the office of the chief minister for three terms, he never had distinction of completing four year tenure in office.
The joint address by the state governor Ram Naik to both the houses of the state legislature on January 29 had also listed the details of the plans for augmenting the power supply by strengthening the power distribution and generation network besides adding fresh power generation capacity.
During election campaign in 2012 Akhilesh Yadav had promised turnaround in the power sector and increase power supply to rural and urban areas. Few months after coming to power Akhilesh Yadav had set the deadline of October 2016 for fulfilling the promise. SP had reiterated this promise during the May 2014 lok Sabha elections.
“Never before in the history of the state since independence so much fresh power generation capacity had been created and commissioned as during the present regime of the Samajwadi Party. Infect turnaround in power sector is the single biggest achievement of the Samajwadi party government’’, said a senior official of the UP Power Corporation limited, not willing to be identified. He added ``right now we have enough power to meet the demand of the rural and urban areas and supply 24 hour supply to all municipal corporation towns and 22 hours to all district headquarters , we are waiting for the completion of the power transmission and distribution sub stations to take the power to the consumers end’’.
According to UPPCl sources the first marathon meeting was chaired by the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav soon after he took over office on March 15 2012. The single point agenda was turn around in power sector to meet the poll promise of 18 hr power supply to villages, 18 hour to tehsil headquarter, 22-24 hr to district headquarters and same hour of power supply to municipal corporation and divisional headquarter towns. This meeting was followed by several marathon meetings and brain storming sessions which has resulted in the turn around, said the official. “There was total anarchy in most of such towns particularly in tehsil headquarter towns as the power was supplied though rural feeder and only for 8 hour and 100 percent of the power distribution sub stations of 33/11 kV were overloaded. The first thing we did was to provide separate feeder and construct 190 new power distribution sub stations of 33/11 kV capacity. All sub stations have been commissioned and supply hour have increased to 14 hour and even more in some big towns’’, said the official. The official said `` the turnaround did not come in a day or a year, behind it lies a time bound result oriented plan to cut the Aggregate technical and commercial losses (AT &C) by curbing power theft and metering of all categories of power connections , construct new 33/11 power distribution sub stations , power evacuation or transmission lines and sub stations and increase the revenue recovery’’.
“The high line losses are still a cause of concern for us which are close to 40 percent. In last one year alone we have reduced the line losses by 4 percent by bringing as many as 40 lakh consumers on the books which has resulted in additional revenue of Rs 400 crore per month. During the next fiscal 2016-17 our aim is to bring down the line losses to 18-20 percent’’, said AP Mishra, MD, UPPCl.
“We have firmed up plans for over 18,000 MW of power from different sources which will come from new thermal power plants at lalitpur, Bara in Allahabad, and Anpara D and Meja plant of NTPC. Besides we have long term agreement for next 25 years from Independent power producers, power exchange and bilateral agreements with Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir’’, said AP Mishra.
Mishra said `` power evacuation or transmission is another big achievement as we are in the process of constructing 111 primary substations of 132 KV to 765 KV capacity costing over Rs 22,000 crore’’. He all the new transmission lines and sub stations will be commissioned before October next.