The Hindu Business Line : No decision on power tariff hike in Kerala: Minister

In reply to questions in the State Assembly on Wednesday, the Minister said that there would not be any power cut or load-shedding in the State during the tenure of the present Government.

He said that the Government proposed to complete 113 small and medium hydel projects in a time-bound manner as the State depended on water resources for a lion's share of its power generation. It has set a target of 500 MW of additional power generation over the next five years and 1,500 MW over the next 10 years.

Mr Balan noted that the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) was to get arrears to the tune of Rs 1,400 crore, including Rs 700 crore from Government entities. Steps have already been initiated to realise the arrears from the private sector and they include revenue recovery proceedings.

The Government has detected power thefts amounting to Rs 7.5 crore after it assumed power. Of this, Rs 6.5 crore had been realised, the Minister said.

As at the end of July this year, KSEB had received 2.68 lakh applications for power connections, of which 2.31 lakh applications were from the domestic sector. The Government was planning to clear the applications by October next year, he said.

On Mullaperiyar

The Kerala Government is taking a serious view of the Tamil Nadu Government's unilateral stand on Mullaperiyar dam issue, which does not take into account the concerns of the people of Kerala, the Water Resources Minister, Mr N.K. Premachandran, said in a statement in the Assembly on Wednesday.

The statement, made under Section 300 of the Assembly Rules, said that Kerala was never against giving water to Tamil Nadu. Though it maintained the same attitude, it was against raising the water level considering the safety of the dam and the concerns of the people.

The State Government had entrusted a team of the Dam Safety Committee to examine whether a tremor at Tannikudi near the dam on August 18 this year had caused any damage to the dam. They had found that there were damages on the surface of the dam.

Since more studies were required to assess the extent of damage, the Minor Irrigation Executive Engineer, Kattappana, was asked to measure the seepage of water continuously for 10 days.

OFFICIAL OBSTRUCTED

However, the officials of the Tamil Nadu Government not only prevented the engineer from measuring the water seepage but also stuck to the stand that no information could be provided to the officials of Kerala without the permission of their superior officials.

Though Kerala had sent letters at the Chief Engineer level and the Department Secretary level to Tamil Nadu seeking permission to examine the water seepage, it did not receive any favourable response. Instead, the Tamil Nadu Government sent a letter at the ministerial level seeking to put in place a security arrangement at the dam jointly with its police force.

The Kerala Chief Minister sent a letter to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu saying that the dam was totally within the State's boundaries and that the Kerala police was enough to take care of the security of the dam.

The letter also underlined that the issue had to be amicably settled through discussions since any damage to the dam was a serious threat to the life and property of the people of the State as also to its wildlife and forest wealth.

The response from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister to the letter was not on expected lines, the statement said.

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