PATNA: CM Nitish Kumar on Tuesday asked Bihar State Power Holding Company Limited (BSPHCL) to install smart prepaid meters in all the households by August 15 next year. He said it would result in restrained use of power, besides eliminating the burden of paying electricity bills, while the replacement of the old rickety transmission lines by the new conductors would stop human casualty caused and also prevent power theft.
Nitish was speaking at a function after inaugurating the state energy department’s completed projects worth Rs616.11 crore and laying the foundation stones for projects valued at Rs390.84 crore. He said the work regarding installation of separate agriculture feeder and replacement of the existing old electric transmission lines should be completed by December 31 this year.
The CM said the government subsidy to power consumers during fiscal 2018-19 would be to the tune of Rs5,000 crore. He disfavoured giving free electricity to any consumers. Referring to the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC) decision as not to hike the power tariff despite the plea of the power distribution companies (discoms), the CM said, “The power tariff charged might be low, but we do not favour grant of free electricity.”
Nitish also said the government had decided to install solar power plants at Kajra (Munger) and Pirpainty (Bhagalpur) from its own resources to generate 300MW at each of the two. He said solar power plates should be first installed on all the government office rooftops before asking private house owners to do the same.
Earlier, deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and energy minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav praised the extent and quality of work, which brought Bihar to the “frontrunner states” in power sector.
Modi said Rs90,000 crore had been spent on the construction of energy infrastructure since 2005-06, while Rs25,000 crore had been spent on subsidy payment.
Principal secretary (energy) and BSPHCL managing director Pratyaya Amrit referred to the milestones set in achieving the targets set by CM in rural electrification, giving power connections to every willing household and installation of separate agriculture feeder, besides toilets for women staff and sectional officers of BSPHCL in all its 349 sub-divisions. Against the target of installing separate 1,312 agriculture feeders, 460 had been completed.
The CM asked BSPHCL to “reassess if more agriculture feeders were required to cover every arable land for irrigation by using electricity so as to completely eliminate the use of diesel-based irrigation,” as the latter led to environmental degradation.
He also said substantial reduction of electricity charges to 75 paise per unit for irrigation had drastically brought down input cost of one-time irrigation of a plot of land from Rs100 spent on diesel to Rs3.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes
