Hyderabad: Once the ongoing Kaleswaram lift irrigation project and other such projects are completed, the irrigation department will become the major consumer of power from TS Transco.
The Transco has estimated that all the lift irrigation schemes in the state will require 11,500 MU of power to operate. Of this, Kaleswaram’s requirement will be 1400 MU.
In the Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR) report submitted to the TS Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC), Transco has estimated the cost per unit at Rs 6.42. For the Kaleswaram project alone, the irrigation department will thus have to pay about Rs 898 crore per year for the 1,400 MU the project will consume.
For the other lift irrigation schemes, the irrigation department will have to pay Rs 7,500 crore per year.
In a recent review meeting, Chief Minister K Chandrase-khar Rao said, “The government is prepared to spend Rs 10,000 crore for lift irrigation and Rs 6,000 to '7,000 crore for free power supply to farmers."
The present revenue of TS Transco is about Rs 26,000 crore. In future it will get about Rs 15,000 crore from the state government.
The state government is giving a subsidy to Transco of '4,700 crore in the current financial year. But in future, power subsidy will become a major burden on the state exchequer. The Chief Minister said that power charges to be paid to Transco by the irrigation department should be provided in the annual state budget itself.
In the budget of the current year, the state government provided about Rs 25,000 crore to the irrigation department. The state government estimates that by 2020 the annual budget will increase to Rs 2 lakh crore and it will not be a problem to pay Rs 15,000 crore for power charges.
Whether the power charges to be paid to Transco are included in the irrigation department budget, or whether the state government will cut the budget of the irrigation department, or whether the state government will allot additional funds is not known at present. If additional funds are provided, the total irrigation budget will balloon to Rs 50,000 crore.
