Free power must be provided in daytime: Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Mohan Reddy

VIJAYAWADA: Taking stock of the supply of free power to the farm sector in the State on Monday, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy directed officials to provide 9-hour free power to farmers in daytime only. He wanted them to promote awareness about the benefits of meters to motor pumps in agriculture fields and that of Direct Benefit Transfer of the free power subsidy in a big way.

The Chief Minister stressed the need for giving wide publicity to the initiative that a burden of not a single rupee will be put on farmers with the installation of smart meters to motors, which will provide data pertaining to consumption and required load of feeders, so the power distribution can be improved further.  He said the data pertaining to consumption of electricity could be logged every 15 minutes with the help of a meter and it will help ensure hassle-free supply of nine hours of free power to the farm sector. The government will directly credit the money into the farmers’ bank accounts for the power consumed by them and they will pay the bills to Discoms. 

The Chief Minister said posters should be displayed in all village secretariats on installation of meters. The message should be clear that installation of meters is only for uninterrupted supply of nine hours power to farmers with no additional burden. The district, divisional, mandal and village level committees should conduct awareness programmes in this regard, he said. 

Jagan said priority should be given to quality in acquiring and setting up of meters and transformers. The Central government agency Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) can be consulted if needed in this regard, he said and directed the officials to create awareness among farmers to use motors with ISI certificate and ensure capacitors also meet ISI standards. The officials informed him that 14,354 linemen were trained to create awareness among farmers on installation of new electricity meters. The feeders’ capacity has been increased to 97.5 per cent and the remaining will be completed by November. 

They explained that bid documents have been prepared for setting up of a 10,000 MW solar power plant and tenders will be invited after the completion of the judicial review to which the Chief Minister directed them to start the project works at the earliest.Minister for Energy Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, Green Energy Corporation CMD G Sai Prasad, APTransco CMD N Srikanth, APGenco MD B Sridhar and  Principal Secretary (Finance) SS Rawat and other officials attended the meeting.