Apang advocates creating national power grid highway for NE

Pasighat, Arunachal, Jan 16 (UNI) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Gegong Apang today reiterated his government's commitment to develop hydro-power in the state and suggested the Centre to launch an ambitious project to create a national power grid highway for uninterrupted transmission and distribution of power in the region. Mr Apang said the highway should be created in the pattern of the national highway for surface transport, built and maintained by the National Highway Authority, which would benefit the country as a whole so that surplus power could be wheeled out to the power-starved states.

He was addressing a two-day inter-sectoral DoNER meeting on review of power generation project and review of transmission, distribution and rural electrification under Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyuti Karan Yojana (RGGVY) scheme here.

There were certain constraints and road blocks that needed to be dealt with without any delay for faster implementation of the hydro-power projects in the region, the Chief Minister said.

He added that the existing guidelines for awarding power projects through tariff-based bidding should be relaxed and flexible enough to meet the special condition of the individual states and provide maximum benefits to the people.

He said in order to make the public private partnership (PPP) effective, it was necessary that independent power producers (IPPs) should be allowed to enter into power purchase agreement directly with the beneficiaries states, electricity boards, corporations or distribution companies to have financial closure as in the case of CPSUs.

The Centre should provide financial assistance to the state governments to enable them for equity participation in joint ventures, he added.

Referring to the huge reservoir of oil and natural gas in the State, Mr Apang urged the centre to help explore the resources and allow the state to have equity participation for commercial exploitation of the reserves.

''We would like the Centre to set up refineries in the state and the gas recovered in the state should be used to run gas-based power stations, '' he said. development UNI