The row over sale and purchase of electricity between the two Telugu states – Telangana and Andhra Pradesh – intensified with Telangana snapping power supply to Andhra Pradesh over Rs 1676. 46 crore of pending dues.
Chairman and managing director of Telangana Transco D Prabhakar Rao in a letter to his Andhra Pradesh counterpart stated that the power supply to Andhra Pradesh will be restored only after payment of the dues.
“We have requested for permanent and amicable settlement of dues between the two states and release Rs 1676.46 crore after netting off AP Genco dues against the amounts receivable by Telangana power utilities. Once the payments are made, supply of power to AP Discoms will be restored”, Rao said.
The move, which came just a day after Andhra Pradesh stopped power supply to Telangana over dues of around 4,440 crore rupees, is seen as a tit for tat. Telangana gets over 400 mw power from Andhra Pradesh on a daily basis.
“Telangana power utilities are also constrained to regulate power supply to AP Discoms from TS Genco stations due to the failure on the part of AP power utilities to pay the rightful dues to TS power utilities,” Rao said.
“Adverting to power regulation notice issued by AP and regarding power regulation to TS Discoms immediately, this is to inform you that on several occasions TS power utilities had requested AP power utilities to settle the issues affably by adjusting the AP Genco power bill against the dues payable by them to TS power utilities and release the net amount. But, the requests were unheeded by AP power officials and AP chose to isolate the claims of TS Dicoms and insist on payments only to AP Genco,” he added.
The dispute between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana over sharing electric power dates back the time when Telangana was carved out as a separate state from Pradesh in 2014. Power utilities of the two states –AP Genco and TS Discoms – have pending dues against each other.
Telangana has been alleging that the electricity being offered by Andhra Pradesh is costlier and that is in violation of the AP Reorganisation Act. Andhra Pradesh, however, maintains that the tariff is in tune with the Act.
In a bid to resolve the power imbroglio, the Centre had earlier offered to play the mediator between the two states.
Andhra Pradesh has become power-surplus with the commissioning of 1,600MW Sri Damo-daram Sanjeevaiah supercritical thermal power project and 2,640MW project promoted by SembCorp Gayatri. Telangana is still a power deficit state.
It could be noted that even before the division of Andhra Pradesh, there were serious imbalances in the consumption and generation of power between Seemandhra and Telangana regions. Telangana region, including the state capital of Hyderabad, reportedly consumed more power than the Seemandhra region, but was lagging in power generation.
