Parliamentary panel finds loophole in Centre's power capacity claim

New Delhi: Punching holes in the Centre’s claims that it has over-achieved the capacity addition target in the power sector for the 12th Plan period by adding around 88,928.2MW as against the target of 88,537MW till October 31, 2016, a high-level Parliamentary panel has noted that the overall target is being achieved due to ‘over-achievement’ of targets assigned to the private sector for the entire Plan period.

In its report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy, which, incidentally, is led by BJP MP Virendra Kumar, has noted that the share of capacity addition assigned to the state-owned entities was a meagre 26,182MW, out of which it was to able to achieve only 14,692MW, a poor 56 per cent till March 31, 2016.

The panel has made its observations on the basis to the capacity addition figures provided to it by the power ministry for the period till March 31, 2016. It presented its report to Parliament on December 15, which was the penultimate day of the Winter Session.

The ministry in its year ending review for 2016 has claimed that during the 12th Plan period, the capacity addition of about 88,928.2MW was achieved against the actual target of 88,537MW from conventional sources, till October 31, 2016.

The Parliamentary panel has struck down the Centre’s claim that though the Centrally-owned entities may have fallen short of the targets for the 12th Plan period (2012-2017), the overall target of 88,537MW is going to be achieved, by observing that it “is not acceptable”.

The panel took into cognisance the figures till March 2016, according to which out of the 88,537MW of capacity addition target of the 12th Plan, 84,990MW had already been achieved, i.e. 96 per cent.