Jayalalithaa asks Prime Minister for immediate allocation of 1000 MW for Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa on Monday urged the Prime Minister to "personally intervene and immediately allocate" an additional power supply of 1,000 MW from June 2011 to May 2012 from the Central Pool "to meet the genuine needs of the farmers and the public."

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Jayalalithaa highlighted that the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board was "resorting to scheduled load shedding of about 1,500 MW and frequent unscheduled load shedding due to an increasing demand and stagnant generation of power."

The power cuts were "badly affecting the industrial sector and the domestic consumers, while agriculture was the worst hit since it affected food production," she said.

Since many new projects are in various stages of construction (including Central projects such as Kudankulam Atomic Power Station and Neyveli Thermal Power Station Stage II expansion) "it may take one or two more years for the state to generate additional power," she wrote.

She further requested the Prime Minister to issue instructions to speed up the completion of the ongoing Central power projects in Tamil Nadu.