Power-cut free plan trips again

NAGPUR: There seems to be no end to hurdles in way of Nagpur becoming free from the menace of load-shedding. Vidarbha Industries Association (VIA) has decided to withdraw its petition filed in Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) on January 22 as the data submitted by MSEDCL to it has turned out to be partially incorrect. MLA Devendra Fadnavis alleged that this was done deliberately to scuttle the scheme.

Fadnavis has threatened that unless all the formalities were completed by next Thursday, BJP would launch an agitation against MSEDCL.

MSEDCL sources said that a meeting was held between R B Goenka of VIA and top officials of MSEDCL in Mumbai on Friday. The power officials told Goenka that some portion of the data submitted to him by local officials of Amravati and Nagpur was erroneous. Half of the data contained input energy of feeders while the other half pertained to output energy. Hence MSEDCL could not support VIA’s petition in MERC.

The top officials provided Goenka half the correct data on Friday while the remaining half will be provided on Saturday morning. VIA has decided to file a fresh petition on Monday. MSEDCL officers assured Goenka that they would file a supporting petition on Monday itself, sources said.

Sources claimed that Nagpur and Amravati could still become free from load-shedding from March 1 if both VIA and MSEDCL filed petitions on Monday. They indicated that the reliability charge would be higher than that calculated in the first petition.

Meanwhile, MLA Devendra Fadnavis, who had taken initiative for making the city load-shedding free, alleged that MSEDCL deliberately delayed filing of supporting petition and provided erroneous data to VIA.

He wondered as to how MSEDCL officials were finding faults in VIA’s petition. The petition was prepared after a series of meetings between VIA, MSEDCL officials concerned and public representatives. In case of Pune and Baramati, MSEDCL filed the supporting petitions along with franchisee’s petition. However, when it comes to Nagpur and Amravati, it was adopting a a very casual approach. Fadnavis charged that the some top officials were trying to tarnish the image of Minister of State for Energy Sunil Deshmukh, who belongs to Vidarbha. Such officials would not be allowed to come to Nagpur, the MLA warned.
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