Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today directed officials to provide power connections to all farmers who apply for them for agriculture purpose.
Rao, who held a review with officials on electricity connections in the agriculture sector, said the decision to give connections to all those who apply has been taken as farmers have been waiting for them for about five years now and also to eliminate corruption in the process.
Officials told him that about 97,000 applications have been pending for new power connections for the last five years and it may cost Rs 600 crore to complete the task, a release from his office said.
Rao asked officials to make arrangements to provide agri power connections even to meet the demand of estimated 20,000 fresh applications, in addition to the 97,000 pending ones.
The process of providing connections should be completed in the next seven months, he said.
Noting that no section of society, including farmers, should face shortage of electricity supply, he directed officials to start making arrangments for uninterrupted power supply in summer.
Rao said steps have been taken to supply free power for nine hours during rabi season.
New sub-stations are being set up at a cost of Rs 2,450 crore to improve the system even if the demand is up to 10,000 MW, he said.
In the wake of re-organisation of districts, Rao told officials to prepare plans to get Central assistance.
PTI