Centre slams Samajwadi Party for power politics

NEW DELHI: Piyush Goyal is getting his first taste of power politics. A day after UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav blamed the Centre for blackouts in his state, the Union power minster shot back on Friday, saying there was enough electricity available in the system for the state to buy.

Sure enough, by early evening, the state utility sent a letter to central generator NTPC for 325 mw power from its Jhajjar plant near Delhi.

On Thursday, Akhilesh had blamed reduced supply from central plants and shortage of coal for the widespread blackout in the state lasting up to 10 hours in some cases. What the statement left unsaid was that the state utility has been shunning NTPC's gas-fired capacity reserved for it at Anta, Auriya and Dadri plants. The financially weak utility is loathe to buying power from these plants because of higher cost. These plants would have to be run on costlier imported gas in the absence of cheaper domestic gas.

The latest crisis hit the state as it failed to tie up additional supplies even when the 500 mw Paricha plant shut down in addition to one 600 mw unit of Anpara-C and demand rose simultaneously due to intensifying summer. In contrast, the state utility had bought 277 mw from NTPC during the polls — from May 3-15.

The Anpara-C project was facing shortage because of the promoters' failure to import the requisite quantity of coal. All other plants were getting 90% of their contracted supplies from Coal India, reflected in NTPC's Tanda and Reliance Power's Rosa running at 92% and 102%, respectively, of their capacity. UP government's own plants were operating at 65% capacity, while Anpara was spinning at 77%.

Clearly, the present crisis highlights the state's doddering power industry due to years of political interference slowing tariff reforms, tardy pace of modernization as well as inadequate pace of capacity addition.