KCR Govt Announces  Free Power To Agricultural Sector 

Hyderabad: The Telangana government today said it has decided to supply 24-hour 'quality' and 'uninterrupted' power on an experimental basis in the entire state to the agricultural sector from tomorrow. For the supply of 'free and quality' power to farmers, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao held a discussion with Telangana State Genco Chairman and Managing Director Prabhakar Rao. Rao said on an experimental basis 24-hour power supply would be given from tomorrow night for five or six days all over the state for the agriculture sector.

Already 24-hour 'quality' power is being supplied on an experimental basis in three districts and the chief minister ordered that all the districts should get 'free and quality' power 24-hours for agriculture from March-April 2018, the CMD said. Accordingly, the electricity organisations have been making arrangements in this regard for the past one year, the official added. "Now these arrangements have come to the final stages.

Measures are ready to give 24-hour power supply to the farm sector from March-April 2018," the CMD said. According to an official release, KCR instructed that all the arrangements for distribution and supply systems should be in place for 24-hour power to farmers by March-April 2018.

The CMD, who also held a meeting with top officials, said from tomorrow in all the districts, under all the sub stations and for all the pump sets power should be supplied for 24-hours. According to the release, the CMD wants estimates to be done and monitoring the feedback in all the districts, all sub stations, divisions, transformers wise. He also wants every minute to be monitored for the next five to six days.

An assessment and review will be taken up after five or six days to make arrangements for the supply of 24-hour quality power on a permanent basis, it said. The release claimed that though there are some states along with Telangana that are giving free power to agriculture, but no where in the country the power is supplied for 24-hours uninterruptedly. "Hence, Telangana state is setting up another record of supplying free, qualitative uninterrupted power for the farm sector," it claimed.

There are 23 lakh pump sets in Telangana of which 9.58 lakh pumps are in the three districts (where uninterrupted power is supplied for farm sector) and they constitute 43 per cent of the total pump sets for which there is a maximum demand of 9,500 MW of power and to cover the remaining pump sets there will be an additional demand for 1500-2000 MWs, it said. "Rs 12,000 crore was spent to strengthen the distribution and supply systems," the release added.

PTI