Kumaramangalam warns power distribution officials of penal action

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JULY 10. Penal action would be taken against the officials of the power distribution agencies if they violated the standards laid down for sharing of power among States, the Union Power Minister, Mr. Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, told presspersons here today after presiding over a meeting of Power Ministers of the Southern States. The Union Minister of State for Power, Ms. Jayawantibehn Mehta, also attended the meeting.

Mr. Kumaramangalam, who blamed the officials for power thefts in various States, disapproved of the bracketing of power utilised by the agricultural sector with losses because of power thefts. The solution lay in metering all the connections.

The Central Electricity Regulation Commission would proceed against the delinquent electricity board of the State concerned or the private distributor. Legal action would be taken against them from August 10. He attributed the violations of the distribution standards to the inability of various agencies to carry out their statutory duties.

The meeting was attended by Karnataka's Minister of State for Power, Mr. Veerakumar Patil, the Power Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Subbarayudu, his Tamil Nadu counterpart, Mr. Arcot Veerasamy, the Chief Minister of Pondicherry, Mr. Shanmugham, and an official from Kerala.

The meeting considered measures to import power from the power surplus Eastern region, the problem of overdrawing of power and peaking, improvement of voltage in the region and how to ensure statutorily notified power cuts.

Mr. Kumaramangalam said power generation in the Southern region would go up by 1,400 MW by March 2001. Another 200 MW would be added by 2002.

On the question of penalising erring officials, he said the agencies concerned in the Southern States should ensure a frequency not less than 48.6 cycles. Any frequency below that would be a violation. Any drop in the frequency would endanger the generation and turbine blades at the power stations and also lead to outages. The electricity board or the private company concerned should equip itself to maintain the standards laid down for distribution. There was no question of shirking away from responsibility. To a question, he did not want to identify any State as being particularly remiss in drawing power from the Southern Grid. The time had come for the power agencies to discipline themselves.

Power theft mafia

Mr. Kumaramangalam said a power theft mafia was operating in some States. He would only appeal to engineers against being parties to the theft. The theft was being carried out in the name of free or subsidised power supply under the ``Kutir Jyoti'' programme or supplies to farmers. The power sector in the country was losing a whopping Rs. 37,000 crores a year, and it could no longer be subsidised.

He said contract for executing the Talcher (Orissa) and Kolar (Karnataka) power line had been awarded and it would be completed by 2003. It would help in bringing 2000 MW from the Eastern States to the South. A sub-station would be ready in Kolar by 2002. Work on commissioning a distribution line between the Kaiga nuclear plant and Narendra (near Dharwad) at a cost of Rs. 300 crores would be taken up in couple of months.

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