No power cuts in election year: CM tells officials

Switching over to the election-year mode, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy today instructed the energy department officials to keep the state insulated from power cuts till May next year. In the normal course, the election process to both the state legislative Assembly and Parliament will be over by May, 2014.

The chief minister also asked the officials to increase the power supply in rural areas to 18 hours by reducing the load relief to 6 hours a day from the present 12 hours and restrict power cuts in towns and municipalities to 2 hours in two spells immediately.

Besides restoring 24-hour supply in Hyderabad, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Warangal and district headquarters with immediate effect, the industrial supply will be increased to 80 per cent of the contracted demand from the present 66 per cent from June 15, the government said in a release.

The move to improve power supply comes along with the onset of timely monsoon in the state. The demand being met by the power utilities has already come down to 227 million units (mu) on June 5 from 247 mu on the same day in March this year as the agriculture demand comes down.

The decision to improve the power supply situation in rural areas comes at a time when the government is getting ready for conducting Panchayat and municipal elections in the coming months. The relief comes after a long spell of power crisis impacting industry and other sectors of the state in the last few years.

In addition to the available power generation, power utilities are purchasing 1,250 Mw. An additional supply of 550 Mw will be made available from June 16 for the next three years, according to the chief minister's office.

Meanwhile, in a lukewarm response, only 7 of the 181 bidders with the proposed capacity of 53 Mw have accepted to supply power at Rs 6.49 per unit rate fixed by the government, an AP Transco release said. In contrast, over 300 bids were filed when the government invited private developers to set up 1,000 Mw of solar plants in the state without indicating any purchase price.