India may not meet power capacity addition target: Par Panel

A Parliamentary Panel today expressed its doubts over the government's claim to meet even the reduced power generation capacity addition target of 62,374 Mw in the current five year plan (2007-12).

"Going by the achievements made so far, the committee is not fully convinced about the government's claim of achieving even the reduced target of 62,374 Mw," the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy said in its report tabled in Lok Sabha.

The Planning Commission had scaled down the power generation capacity addition target in the 11th Plan to 62,374 Mw from original 78,577 Mw in its mid-term review of the current five year Plan brought out in March this year.

The Panel said that the prospective planning has not been done and executed properly in the case of the 11th Plan period by the Ministry of Power because the factors stated for delay in capacity addition could not have cropped up suddenly.

Quoting the Central Electricity Authority estimates, the Power Ministry said in a reply to the panel that 39,022 Mw is likely to be commissioned with high level of certainty during the remaining period of the current plan.

The ministry said that a capacity of 23,352 Mw has already been commissioned till May end this year.

However, the committee observed that the term 'high level of certainty' itself exposes the very fact that government itself is not very sure of achieving the set targets.

The panel expressed concerns over snail pace progress by certain public sector undertaking on developing hydro power capacities in the 11th Plan, including NHPC, NEEPCO and DVC.

State-run NHPC had originally planned to add 5,322 Mw through 12 hydro power projects during the 11th Plan but the target was scaled down to 3,272 Mw in the mid-term review by the Plan panel. It has commissioned 1,030 Mw in first three years of the current Plan.

Similarly, the NEEPCO's proposed planned outlay of Rs 18,594.46 crore for the 11th Plan was revised to Rs 6,376.21 which was further scaled down to Rs 4,024.11 crore.

The committee also noted that the financial performance of DVC as the achievements up to third quarter of 2009-10, has been Rs 12,252.26 crore as against the estimates of Rs 24,298.85 crore.

The committee asked the ministry to play a pro-active role by giving meaningful guidance and supplementing the efforts of PSUs while interacting with the state governments and other agencies in the pursuit of timely execution of projects.