Bifurcation blues: Telangana, Andhra Pradesh locked in power tussle

Hyderabad: The residuary state of Andhra Pradesh feels that it has got a raw deal on the power front as Telangana has been allotted 56 per cent of the power generated in both the regions.

The new Andhra Pradesh government is now demanding that a separate Load Dispatch Centre be set up for the residual state, a deviation from the AP Reorganisation Act. The state government has also initiated the process of cancellation of the existing Power Purchase Agreements between the plants and the discoms to benefit Andhra Pradesh.

Insiders say that the Andhra government feels that having a common Load Dispatch Centre (currently Southern Region Load Dispatch Centre) would lead to supply issues to the AP side with officials from Telangana working in the SRLDC.

Earlier, there has been too much of emphasis on the power requirement of Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy which were supplied more power. Speculating the future requirement on the consumption pattern of these regions, therefore, has led a to loss of up to five per cent of actual demand projections for the Andhra Pradesh region.

As per the installed capacities based on geographical location, Seemandhra has 9852.8 MW capacity while Telangana has 6413.5 MW. However, with the re-allocation of power, Seemandhra will get 7870.9 MW while Telangana will get 8395.4 MW.

“Historically, for about 10 years, power allocation has been lesser to the discoms in the Seemandhra region (EPDCL and SPDCL) than their realistic entitlement in the guise of development in Hyderabad. Due to this, Seemandhra Discoms lose five per cent of total  allocation meant for Seemandhra to Telangana discoms,” said an insider.