Mah to face more power shortage: Patil

Pune, Oct 14 (UNI) Maharashtra Power Minister Dilip Walse Patil today said the state will continue to face power shortage for the next one and half months.

The situation will improve thereafter as power generation upto 1400MW will begin by the end of November, he added.

The Minister was talking to reporters after inaugurating infrastructure projects worth Rs 1,311 crore here.

''The past three days have been very difficult specially in rural areas where there have been long power cuts. This is not load shedding, but electricity cannot be drawn due to 'under frequency tripping'. Some states (without naming any particular state) are drawing electricity in an indisciplined manner. We were getting upto 600MW from the north-east Connect.

But this is now being diverted to Delhi and Uttar Pradesh,'' the minister lamented.

He said he would be taking up the matter with the Central lectricity Authority and concerned leaders in Delhi on October 19th.

''I am going to draw their attention to this problem that states are not maintaining grids and frequency,'' he rued.

To a question about MERC proposal of Tariff proposals, the minister said in places where there is no load shedding, the power rates will go up and in zones where there is sustained load shedding, rates will be reduced. This will help revenue generation, he opined.

''We will try to tap all sources for generation but the priority will still be given to energy conservation,''he said adding that the state's power needs will be 7500MW. We have two projects of 250MW each that have been completed, and around 1400 from differenct sources and places like Parli, Tarapore, and Dabhol. Loadshedding has been upto 2500MW lately, he revealed.

Earlier, District Guardian Minister and Irrigation Minister Ajit Pawar suggested that power projects should be given priority and the local civic bodies should not give completion certificates unless the builder provides for space for transformers. He said that the annual 20 per cent losses are reducing by 3 per cent but more efforts have to be put on recovery as it stood at Rs 900 crore when the backlog was Rs 1400 crore. The same concerns were echoed by State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harshavardhan Patil.

The Managing Director of MSEDCL, Mr Sanjay Bhatia made a presentation of the Boards future plans.

UNI DWN WD SHB BS1914