Vijayawada: Energy minister Gottipati Ravikumar told the assembly on Monday the govt is unable to supply power to agriculture pumpsets during the daytime due to inadequate infrastructure. He said the previous govt completely neglected the upgrading of infrastructure for rural power supply despite the Centre’s repeated requests to join the PM Kusum scheme.
Blaming the previous govt of pushing the discoms into deep debts with its “flawed policies”, he said chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has reviewed the existing infrastructure and the measures to be initiated to provide nine hours of power to farmers during daytime with officials and directed them to take the Centre’s support.
“AP recently joined the PM Kusum scheme as per the chief minister’s instructions, which will help us upgrade the power infrastructure,” he said, and promised the assembly that additional connections would be given to farmers soon.
Ravikumar further stated that about 69,000 applications for new connections are pending with the discoms which would be cleared in a phased manner.
“The Centre has also allowed state govt to grant another three lakh connections under the PM Kusum scheme by upgrading the infrastructure. We agree that providing ninhours of supply to agriculture pumpsets will help the farmers. While we are giving supply during the day in some areas, we are forced to schedule it in different slots depending on the availability of infrastructure including sub-stations and transformers. We are hopeful of removing the hurdles and provide nine-hour supply during daytime shortly,” he added.
