Power cuts imposed in Rajasthan

With power deficit assuming serious proportions, the Rajasthan government-owned electricity distribution companies have decided to impose power cuts in the state effective Thursday, officials said.

However, Jaipur and Kota cities have been kept out of these scheduled outages.

For domestic consumers, daily four-hour power cut in two phases of two hours each has been imposed while industries will face a cut of five hours daily.

Agriculture sector, on the other hand, will get power supply of only five hours in a day.

"The state government had to impose power cut as there is a big gap between demand and supply. Things might improve if we get rains," said an energy department official.

One 200 MW unit of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station at Rawatbhata was lying closed due to a fault while two units of 250 MW each of Chhabra thermal power plant have been shut down for annual maintenance, the official said.

Besides this, some of the power plants are facing problems on account of shortage of imported coal, the official added.

Meanwhile, the industrial sector has flayed the power cuts.

"These power cuts will certainly hit our production badly," said R.P. Singh, a local industrialist.