Shinde lambast UP for poor performance

New Delhi, Dec 5 (UNI) Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde today admonished Uttar Pradesh for its poor show in handling the capacity addition and said the state has added only 536 MW against a requirement of more than 3,000 MW.

Responding to UP Chief Minister' statement that electricity is the responsibility of the Centre, Mr Shinde said UP has the peak shortage of about 23 per cent which is 2,500 MW. In an obvious reference to Chief Minister Mayawati Mr Shinde said ''I think the Chief Minister needs to appreciate this Constitutional provision (that electricity is the responsibility of the state).'' The Plant Load Factor that is the efficiency of the State's thermal power plants has declined to 56 per cent against the national average of 77 per cent, the Minister said.

If UP were to run its power plants as per the national average of PLF, it could have generated additional power of 1,000 MW cutting its present shortage by 40 per cent, Mr Shinde said in response Mr Shinde said Uttar Pradesh's State distribution network has very high aggregate technical and commercial losses averaging 45 per cent. UP is the most indisciplined State with regard to grid discipline, regularly overdrawing power and putting the entire national grid at risk.

The State has overdrawn 1800 Million Units between April and October 2007. Apart from overdrawing, the State has failed to pay Rs 700 crores of overdrawal charges. This is the only State in India to have overdrawn and failed to pay to such an extent. The State has been issued a Show Cause Notice by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission in this regard, he said.

Despite all this, the Central Government has been doing its utmost to alleviate the power situation for the people of Uttar Pradesh.

The State receives the highest allocation from Central Generating Stations in India. The Central Generating Stations give about 4,800 MW of electricity to Uttar Pradesh.

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