Andhracafe.com- HYDERABAD: Stung by the farmers’ protests over inadequate power supply to agriculture sector, the State Government on Wednesday initiated a series of measures including imposition of four-hour duration power cut in the domestic sector to tide over the ongoing energy crisis in the state.

“The Government has also decided to take up a census of the existing agricultural pump sets to know their numbers on each transformer and farmers have to register their pump sets with the officials concerned,” Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters after chairing a high-level review meeting on power supply position here.

Rajasekhara Reddy said that power generation in December was 131 Million Units (MUs) as against the normal generation of 146 MUs while the demand was 163 MUs.

To bridge the gap of 32 MUs, the State Government has began purchasing power from other states, impose four-hour power cut on domestic consumers, ask the Collector, Superintending Engineer of Transco and Joint Director (Agriculture) in every district to review the situation every day, conduct all party meetings at sub station level once in a week and transfer the decision-making powers to impose power cuts from Transco to Genco.

“The demand is expected to be around 2,000 MUs till March 2007 and the State Government will purchase power from outside by spending Rs 689 crore,” he said.

The Centre has agreed to restore AP’s share of 115 MW from Kaiga nuclear power plant and efforts were on to secure another 300 to 400 MW unallocated power to the state. Negotiations are on with Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and Nav Bharat Ferro Alloys to provide captive power generated by them.

“After going through legal aspects, the Government is ready to buy 300 MW from the non conventional energy producers,” he said adding that though the Genco officials have stepped up hydel generation at Srisailam, they were careful as the water has to last till March.

The spurt in the demand was due to increase in crop area _ 26 lakh hectares as against last year’s 22 lakh hectares _ in Rabi season and also increase in the number of unauthorised agricultural pumpsets from 24.88 lakh to 27 lakh.

Accusing the Telugu Desam of signing agreements with the gas-based power units even when ONGC was not in a position to supply gas, he said that the state had to pay deemed generation charges of Rs 1,200 crore to these units. However, the present Government held negotiations with them to avoid paying the same.

“The Government will try to get 2 MCMD gas from ONGC by March or June next year and the situation would ease to some extent,” he said.

On the Opposition demand for nine-hour uninterrupted power supply, he said that the seven-hour power supply started since 2003 kharif when TDP was in power. We are continuing the same but at free of cost, he said.