Union Minister of Power, Coal and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal today gave his nod to release Rs. 800 crore for Punjab under Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) with a view to modernise and upgrade rural power sector.
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has been asked by Goyal to examine sale of surplus power from Punjab in coming months. This transpired in a meeting with Piyush Goyal when the deputy CM on Monday called on him at his New Delhi office and urged to resolve the pending power issues of State power utilities. The Union Minister said that the proposal under DDUGJY submitted by Punjab was considered and Rs. 800 crore would be released under this very soon.
He said that Punjab, which was already a forerunner on power production front in the country, would get another boost after getting the project under DDUGJY to modernise and upgrade its transmission and distribution power system in rural areas. He said this project would witness complete separation of agriculture and non-agriculture feeders facilitating judicious power supply to agri and non-agri consumers in rural areas with improvement in hours of power supply.
The deputy CM said that Punjab has sought sale of surplus power from the state and the Union Minister said that Centre would examine this proposal very soon. The Minister asked the state Powercom to submit a detailed proposal in this regard so that the possible modalities could be looked into.
The Union Minister also gave his nod to provide full capacity coal linkage and supply to Punjab thermal plants as per agreement in future and there would be no shortage in this regard.
Goyal assured that the clearance to Pachwara coal mine allotted to Punjab in Jharkhand would also be given in the coming days. He has issued directions to the authorities concerned to make this site operational as soon as possible. He has also agreed to enhance supply of one million tonne coal of Central Coalfields Ltd. to 1.50 million tonnes. The meeting was also attended by Power Secretary Anurag Aggarwal, Additional Resident Commissioner Rahul Bhandari, CMD Powercom K.D. Chaudhary and Additional Principal Secretary to Deputy CM Rahul Tiwari.
