National Capital Delhi’s Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has been asked to draw up a plan to improve the electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure in the Capital for the long term, said Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy, on Monday.
Goyal was speaking to reporters after meeting the Bhartiya Janata Party’s members of the Delhi Legislative Assembly to take stock of the power situation in the Capital. Last week, the Minister had blamed the Capital’s power woes on the lack of work done to improve the transmission and distribution infrastructure by the previous Delhi Government led by the Congress party’s Sheila Dixit.
On Monday, Goyal also said that all the projects announced by the Power Ministry last week to provide temporary relief to Delhi are on track for completion within the deadlines announced.
“The temporary restoration of Bamnauli-Papankalan and Bawana-Rohini transmission lines is complete and the Mandola-Gopalpur line will be complete by 3 pm on Monday,” said Goyal.
“One of the most challenging projects is the completion of the Maharani Bagh-Ghazipur line,” he added. “Normally, such works take six-eight months for completion since it is on the river bank but Power Grid Corporation of India has said it will be able to complete it by June 22.” Nearly 600 employees of PowerGrid have been working across six sites in New Delhi to complete the projects.
Apart from this, the Power Minister said that the Delhi government has also sent notices to Delhi’s power distribution utilities (Discoms) which have done little to improve the transmission and distribution infrastructure in the city. Goyal did not elaborate but said that strict action will be taken against the Discoms which have not performed.
Reports on outages Meanwhile, the Discoms are also giving reports on their planned power outages every day. “But the time taken to restore the feeder outages and other faults especially in BSES areas needs to be addressed by the distribution utilities, under the supervision of the Government of Delhi,” an official statement from the Power Ministry stated.
The Power Ministry also stated that the NTPC allocated gas from other station to Bawana power plant was released on June 10 itself and the state utilised the additional generation of 400 MW from the additional gas supply. However, due to low demand since then the additional gas has been kept on reserve to generate power as and when Delhi requires it.