Power Minister Shrikant Sharma admitted that his department has failed to implement power roster as announced earlier at the village-level and that it would take at least two years to improve the system for the people to avail 24x7 electricity supply.
“We have no hesitation in admitting that the government has failed to provide power as per the roster announced. Basically, we inherited a rotten system from the previous regime. We are now trying to improve the infrastructure like transmission and distribution,” Sharma said addressing media persons in lucknow on Wednesday.
Sharma said that it would take at least two years to improve the situation but the department would implement roster within 15 days so that villages would get 18 hours, tehsils 20 hours and district headquarters 24 hours of power supply.
The minister said that though the BJP government was purchasing seven times more power than the SP government presently, the supply was hampered because of technical faults. “There was increase in power demand because of summers. In villages, farmers used tube wells as rains played truant for the last many weeks. This has resulted in load increase leading to technical faults,” he said.
Sharma said that under 'Power For All', the government has initiated projects to improve grid capacity from present 18,500 to 22,000 mw so that power could be supplied to the consumers next year. "For this, over 11,000 transformers were being upgraded," he said.
When asked about former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav calling the BJP’s White Paper as a bundle of lies, Sharma said that the Samajwadi Party chief had no moral right to comment on the BJP government.
"The SP government has ruined the state and now they are questioning the BJP government’s efforts which has been in power for just six months. This shows the childish attitude of the SP president," he said.