HYDERABAD: If Monday’s transport logjam was the first taste of the Telangana Sakala Janula Samme for the state capital, it’s bound to get worse from Wednesday with the state government finally imposing an ‘official’ two-hour power cut on the city. With power generation plunging due to disrupted coal supplies from strike-hit Singareni Collieries, the government was forced into this decision of last resort.There was a quiver of panic in chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy’s voice as he made an urgent appeal to the striking government staff to get back to work. He reeled off figures on the losses and difficulties caused by the strike: Rs.300 crore revenue lost, 10,000 buses off the roads, seven lakh people out of NREGP work, 84 lakh commuters driven to desperation, 30 lakh students out of their classrooms.“The government of India already knows your sentiments on the Telangana issue,’’ he said in words aimed at the striking staff. “It is the Telangana people who are suffering the most.”The chief minister constituted another contingency task force -- adding to the two he set up on power and transport on Monday -- to work out the actual revenue and loss to the government during the strike period.Backed to the wall on the power front, he spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the phone for help with his most pressing problem: the power deficit of 6 million units (240 MU supplied against 246 MU required). The state is buying about 1,600 mw from every source in the market, but it is not nearly enough.Kiran Kumar requested the PM for an additional allocation of coal, gas and power to Andhra Pradesh to tide over the crisis. In a quick response, the Prime Minister directed the three ministries concerned to give top priority to his request. The Prime Minister also spoke to the power secretary, the coal secretary and the NTPC chief.The chief minister wanted the Centre to allocate an additional 500 MW from central generating stations (CGs) in the southern region to meet his contingency. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas was requested to divert 1.7 MMSCMD of natural gas from the GMR Vemagiri and other mini gasbased projects to other standard gas-based independent power producers of AP.With regard to coal supply, the state government requested the Union Coal Ministry to direct Mahanadi Coal Fields to allot about 30000 metric tonnes of coal to APGENCO.Besides, it wanted allocation of 4 lakh MT of coal from Western Coal Limited and 5 lakh MT from Central Coal Fields for APGENCO’s thermal stations.Kiran Kumar also directed the Singareni Collieries managing director to engage contract workers to excavate coal under police protection in the exposed coal mines of Singareni, Manuguru and Srirampur. At present, there is nil coal production in the Singareni mines in Karimnagar, Adilabad and Warangal districts. However, about 20000 MT of coal production took place from the Kothagudem and Sathupally mines.
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