Chennai: Pointing out that unscheduled power cut is occurring everyday in most of the Tamil Nadu, the Madras high court has directed the secretary to government, energy department, and chairman, Tangedco to appear before the court on September 28 and explain the power position in the state.
Justice N.Kirubakaran gave the directive while passing further interim orders on a contempt application filed by the Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association.
The judge said, “Tamil Nadu is claimed to be a power surplus state. It is not known as to how there would be chance for unscheduled power cuts affecting common man’s life, students and elders, even functioning of hospitals and courts. There are many news reports that there is shortage of coal in Tamil Nadu and other reasons for power deficit. It is surprising to note that even the coal storage is also limited only to 15 days. Ours is a bigger state where more than 7 and half crores people are living. In case of emergency, there should be at least one month coal storage available with Tangedco which is the power generator and distributor. The contention of S.Parthasarathy, counsel for the petitioner, at this juncture has to be recalled that wind power is deliberately backed down and the thermal power which is the least in the priority list is given priority. Therefore, to explain the power position in Tamil Nadu, secretary to government, energy department and chairman, Tangedco, are directed to appear before
this court on September 28 and answer 13 queries”.
Electricity has become very essential and without power supply, even human life cannot be lead and no one can think of life without electricity even for 10 minutes.
When such was the position, the government should have been careful enough to see that all precautionary steps have been taken to see that the power supply was not interrupted and sufficient power supply was given to the citizens, the judge added and posted to September 28, further hearing of the case.
In its contempt application, the association submitted that the order of the court dated July 8, 2015 has been violated.
The interim order prohibited the authorities from backing down windmill energy.
In spite of direction, the entire wind energy produced has not been infused into the Tamil Nadu grid continuously.
The windmill energy should be utilized and it was in the first priority list, whereas the thermal energy which was the least in priority list was given priority over wind energy for unknown reasons backing down the wind energy, the association added.
Additional advocate general C.Manishankar submitted that there was no backing down and if at all any backing down was there, it was only due to unavoidable circumstances, taking the grid safety into consideration.
Based on the SLDC direction also, the backing down was done some times, he added.
