Telangana seeks surplus power, coal from centre

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allocate 500 MW to Telangana from surplus power available from the Eastern Grid in view of severe shortage of power in the coming four months.

In a letter to the prime minister, the chief minister sought his immediate intervention to make the surplus available to the state using the existing transmission corridor capacity.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, said Telangana, ever since its inception June 2 last year had been experiencing acute power shortage.

"The situation is further compounded by the fact that the state of Andhra Pradesh, for reasons best known to them, is not honouring the provisions of the State Reorganisation Act, 2014, and existing Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)," he wrote.

"The committee appointed by the ministry of power to look into the power sharing arrangements is yet to give its final report in this regard," said KCR, while recalling a letter he already wrote on the issue Sep 6 last year.

"The situation has only worsened since then and going to be severe in the coming four months i.e., February-May 2015," he added.

In a separate letter to Modi, the chief minister requested that Telangana be allotted coal and coal blocks based on the state's power requirements.

He wrote that the state required 12.99 Metric Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) coal during 2015-16 and this will go up to 21.79 MTPA next year and over 57 MTPA during 2019-2020 in view of the upcoming thermal power plants in the state.

He provided details of coal requirement for various power projects. The chief minister also informed Modi that there was already a supply gap of 4.5 MTPA for existing power plants, which require coal blocks allocation.