Central power projects
State seeks bigger share
Yoginder Gupta
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 29
Haryana has propounded a principle, which if accepted by the Centre, will lead to considerable improvement in the power situation in the state. It will also reduce the subsidy bill of the state government on electricity supplied to the agriculture sector.

At present, the state government pays over Rs 2,500 crore to the power utilities for the cheap electricity they supply to the agriculture sector to boost the farm production. The power utilities purchase power, some time at rates as high as Rs 12 per unit, and supply to the tubewells for as low as 24 paisa per unit. The difference has to be paid by the state government, which has been making budgetary provision year after year for this subsidy. The subsidy bill has been increasing every year with the demand for power for agricultural operations growing up.

With the river water issue remaining unsolved for the past many years, farmers in the state are increasingly taking to tubewells for irrigating their crops, leading to higher subsidy on the part of the government.

To reduce this burden, certain governments in the past had put a ban on releasing electricity connections to new tubewells. But the ban was lifted when the INLD came to power. The process of releasing connections to the tubewells was further liberalised by the Hooda government. Both profess to be pro-farmers.

There are allegations that in order to hide their inefficiency, the power utilities increase the amount of the subsidy to the agriculture sector. Finance Minister Birender Singh had mooted a proposal to give subsidy directly to the farmers, but it is yet to be implemented.

Power Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala, while speaking at the conference of the power ministers in Delhi last week, demanded that Haryana should be given a greater share in the power generated by the Central projects. His argument was that his state was one of the major contributors to the central food grain pool, for which the state government had to supply power at cheaper rates to the farmers.

Addressing Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Surjewala said the state had taken major initiatives in increasing its own power generation. While in the five years after 2004-05, Haryana would increase its own generation capacity by 2,180 MW, the contribution of the central sector generating stations in Haryana would increase by about 220 MW in the same period. He said since Haryana was helping the country in meeting the demand of agricultural produce, an additional share in the ultra mega power projects (UMPP), unallocated power and central sector projects must to be given to it.

He said more than two-third of the national capital region was in Haryana. While the Centre was giving a huge amount to Delhi for meeting its power needs, Haryana was not getting even a single rupee on this account. Surjewala jokingly told Shinde, who belongs to Maharashtra, that the Haryanavis were not like Mumbaikars who asked the people of other states to leave Mumbai.

If the Centre agrees to Haryana’s demand for a greater share in its projects, the state would get this power at predetermined low rates as compared to what it has to pay when it draws power from these projects in excess of its allocation. This will help the state in reducing its subsidy bill.