Govt to purchase power worth Rs 1200 crore: CM

Hyderabad, Jan 1 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy today said the government would purchase power to the tune of Rs 1200 crore during the next three months to maintain seven-hour- long power supply to farmers in the state.

Dismissing as ''politically motivated'', the Opposition's uproar on the power issue, Dr Reddy, in an informal chat with newspersons here, said the government had provided free power to the farmers for the last five seasons and the present crisis was due to certain technical problems.

He said the government had purchased electricity to the tune of Rs 90 crore during December 2006.

Asserting that the Andhra Pradesh extended highest subsidy to farmers amounting to more than Rs 4000 crore, he said the government was providing 15000 million units free power worth Rs 2500 crore to farmers.

Dr Reddy said the government was committed to protect the farmers' interests and ruled out any increase in power tariff on domestic consumers.

UNI