UP takes additional steps to improve power availability in the state

Lucknow: Assured of adequate support by the government at the Centre to accelerate annual growth rate to ten percent, the Uttar Pradesh government is moving faster to remove bottlenecks from the areas which could hinder growth.

Agriculture and industry make large contribution to the state economy and for higher growth in these sectors better availability of power is a pre-requisite.

The government, therefore, has put additional emphasis of generation and distribution of power. Generation at present is not enough to meet the total demand. Power theft has made the situation worse.

The line loss issue has been already addressed by offering incentives to those who have unauthorised connections and want to regularise them .

To further improve the situation in this field, the government has, additionally, amended the electricity act and provided for five-year jail to those who will continue to draw power illegally after the next month deadline .

As these measures will not improve power generation the government has taken an additional step to help in this regard. This has been done in addition to other steps taken in generation area . For higher generation, emphasis has been put on availability of better quality coal to thermal plants, timely and proper maintenance of the existing plants and better capacity utilisation.

Worn-out or low capacity transformers affected power supply in different parts. A drive was launched to identify such transformers which was essential to improve availability in rural and urban areas.

It has been found that 8000 transformers need urgent replacement and the cost of this job was estimated at Rs 600 crores.

The government has decided to make available this sum and asked officials concerned to accomplish the task before the monsoon sets in..

It has instructed them to install 100 KVA transformers at all the places where 65 KVA transformers had been installed.

Thus, it has made a departure from the old practice of providing same capacity new transformers where ever replacement was needed.

All this has created hope that the state will achieve 24x7 power supply target in next two years.