Telangana Becomes 16th State to Join Uday

New Delhi/Hyderabad, Feb 12 (IANS) Telangana has agreed to join UDAY, the central government's electricity distribution utility financial turnaround scheme, becoming the 16th state to do so.

This was announced by Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday after Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao called on him in the national capital. UDAY

He said the total debt of Telangana discom is around Rs.12,500 crore. Part of the loan will be transferred to state books this year.

An agreement on joining the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY) will be signed in 15-20 days. The officials of the state and central governments will meet to work out the modalities.

The chief minister, who earlier met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said he had agreed to lay foundation stone of NTPC's Ramagundam Thermal Power Project of 1,600 MW (2X800 MW) in the first week of March.

Goyal said that the tendering process of the project is completed and it is expected that the 1,600 MW would be completed by 2020.

The central government has also given approval for setting up three more units of 800 MW totalling 2,400 MW at Ramagundam. The work on them will start soon.

The project with total capacity of 4,000 MW and committed by the central government under Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act will be implemented by 2021.

The central minister said 600 acres of land was required for the project and the chief minister agreed to allot the same.

Goyal said the central government also approved setting up of 1,080 MW power plant by the Telangana Genco (Power Generation Corporation) at Manuguru in Khammam district.

Four units of 270 MW available with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) will be supplied for setting up the project in two years.

The clearance from the environment ministry will be sought for the project.

Goyal said Telangana would be setting up a solar park to generate 2,500 MW renewable energy. "If Telangana identified one or two more barren lands, we can think of setting up more solar parks," he said.

Rao also urged the central government to provide coal linkages as the state plans to add new thermal power capacity of 5,880 MW in next 3-4 years.

To this, Goyal said that they were working on finalising new coal linkage policy for power plants.

The central government last year allotted Tadicherla-I coal block to Telangana but the production of coal will take some time. As a short-term measure (tapering bridge) the state will be provided coal linkage of 2.5 million tonnes.