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| Beg, Rather lock horns over Power crisis | | T&D losses upto 74 %: Shakeel Qalander | | Bashir Assad
Jammu, Jan 6: Power scenario in Jammu and Kashmir shows no signs of improvement even though the bill for power purchase from Power Trading Corporations has touched Rs. 3218 crore during the current fiscal which amo-unts to the steep of 125% as against 1400 crores in 2004. The crisis besides subjecting the commoner to inconvenience has triggered a verbal dual betw-een the former Finance Minister, Muzaffar Hussain Beg and Abdul Rahim Rather.
Though the generation capacity of the state owned power projects has declined by 40% since December 2012, however, the expenditure on purchase of power is likely to cross Rs 3218 crores, 120 crores more than the budgetary allocations for the same period in the previous fiscal. Though some experts attribute this hike in power expenditure to the growing consumer demand which they put at around 15% each year, even then the expenditure should have been around 2500 crores, 718 crores less than what it is right now.
The officials attribute the reasons for poor power generation to transmission loss and power theft. However, this is debatable. And if it is presumably so, then who is to own the responsibility. Government or the consumer? Of course, the consumer is morally and legally duty bound to use the power judiciously but the
government cannot shy away from its responsibility. The data merits an in-depth analysis. At present the state has 2545 units of power available through its own resources, i.e. power being generated from the state owned power
projects. Then the government is purchasing 8919 units from power trading companies which means a total of 11464 units of power are available right now. The total demand is at 2600 MW and the government is providing 1900 MW i.e. deficit of 700 MW which is at 27%. And then the state purchases from its own Power Development
Corporation about 683 units which goes unaccounted.
To adjust the deficit of 700 MW, the government resorts to load shedding both scheduled and unscheduled. If it is that simple then why the management is so poor and why the government has failed in providing electricity even after adjustment of power deficit which is only 27%. And why the expenditure has
exceeded by Rs 125 crores.
Well known Kashmiri businessman and social activists, Shakeel Qalander offers an explanation. According to him, the average rate per unit is Rs. 3.6 as agreed upon between the parties. But when the state resorts to unscheduled interchange during peak hours in violation of the agreement per-unit rate jumps to 15 to 16 rupees. "On the other hand we are getting power at the rate of 7.23 rupees from Dulhasti and 5.27 rupees from
Sewa which also adds to the average per-unit cost." He, says the the government has failed in evolving a universal mechanism to deal with the power crisis. "The state has, so far, not even generated a single unit of power out of the approved power projects because the execution has been delayed in both central, and joint venture projects despite the fact that hundreds of crores have been so far spent on paper work only", he said adding "They don't have any concept and instead of working a mechanism, they are resorting to adhocism."
Besides, said Qalander, the T&D losses have gone up to 74 %, however, the government puts the losses at 62%.
Former Deputy Chief Minister, Muzaffar Hussain Beg put the blame squarely on the present dispensation for severe power crisis in the state. "They have failed in providing smooth power supply to the consumers across the state despite expending very huge amount on purchase of power."During our time the expenditure on power was just Rs 1300 crores, even then we were providing smooth power supply to the people particularly
during the peak hours", Beg said adding the reason for providing smooth and uninterrupted power during his tenure was that the government was paying advance to the power trading companies to avoid steep in rates
and competitive bidding. "when you pay advance to the power trading companies, competitive bidding is not applicable to you and you get power on fixed rates irrespective of peak and non-peak consumption", he said.
Finance Minister, Abdul Rahim Rather, however, refuted the allegations and said that reason for exceeded expenditure on power purchase which is approximately Rs 3218 crores (118 crores more than the actual
allocations) was the unforeseen expenditure. While elaborating this point, Rather said that his government had to pay 600 crores on account of the unauthorized power purchased by the previous regime
during peak hours from power trading companies.
Justifying the steep increase in expenditure, Rather said, "on one hand the demand has increased enormously while on the other hand cost per unit power has also increased considerably, so it is but natural to have increase in expenditure.
Leveling counter allegations on previous regime (PDP-Congress coalition), Rather said that they got Rs 1300 crores each year from 2004 to 2007 which means Rs 3900 crores as Power Reforms Grant which they have not spent on reforms of power. "They might have spent such a huge amount of Rs 3900 crores but not on reforms. Show me a single unit of power they produced during their tenure, before blaming us for power crisis, they should explain where they have spent Rs 3900 crores received from the central government as Power Reforms Grant" Rather said.
However, Muzaffar Hussain Beg rebutted Rather saying that getting Rs 1300 crores separately from the central government was again the wisdom of the PDP-Congress coalition government. "To avoid deficit of power on
the budget, we got a separate allocation of 1300 crores from the Centre and it was named as Power Reforms Grant which was actually spent on power expenditure", Beg said and added that during that period the state plan was not affected by the deficit in power sector.
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