Hyderabad : Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao announced a New Year’s Gift for Farmers, Farmers in the State had their dream fulfilled as the New Year 2018 begins on Monday by giving Uninterrupted power supply for the farmers.
In a first, an ambitious programme aimed at providing 24X7 free power to the farm sector got under way. Some 23 lakh agricultural pumpsets across the 31 districts will operate without auto starters, Telangana Today reported.
Today CM KCR makes a farmer’s dreams of 24X7 power supply becoming true and fulfilling of their dreams because the backdrop of a grave power crisis predicted by Seemandhra rulers, in separate Telangana State.
KCR who had been firm on setting the state agriculture free from the unexpectations of nature, is successful considerably in making the irrigation under tube wells and bore wells largely an assured source of irrigation.
Source wise distribution reveals that wells were the main source of irrigation in the State, irrigating about 84% of the total net irrigated area in 2014-15. The share of canal and tank irrigation comprised a mere 10 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively, while well irrigation showed a faster growth rate since 1985-86.
Well irrigation, which was 16 per cent in 1955-56, increased to 37% in 1985-86 and further increased to 81% in 2015-16. But the shortage of power remained a major constraint for success despite rapid energisation of wells.
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The implementation of uninterrupted power supply to the farm sector involved a great deal of brainstorming, months of planning and several rounds of trial runs before it got the stamp of approval of the Chief Minister.
Power Minister G Jagadish Reddy said that the Chief Minister had been planning 24X7 power supply since the day he launched the fight for statehood. He had a thorough grasp of the problems facing the State as well as long lasting solutions to them.
Including Tamilnadu and few other States were supplying free power to farmers but nowhere was it being supplied for 24 hours. Telangana State Power Generation Corporation and Transco CMD D Prabhakar Rao said that the 24-hour power supply will result in gradual increase in demand and will reach 11,000 MW by March.
From June 17, round-the-clock power supply to 9.85 lakh pumpsets was started on an experimental basis in the erstwhile districts of Medak, Nalgonda and Karimnagar. In November, more districts were brought under the experiment. A trial run of the round-the-clock supply was undertaken in November last before it was extended to the entire State. Accordingly, Transco, Genco, SPDCL, NPDCL had made the arrangements. Rs 12,610 crore was spent on strengthening the distribution and supply systems.