The Hindu Business Line : KSEB restructuring deadline extended

The Centre has agreed to the State Government’s plea to extend the deadline for restructuring of Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) by another six months.

The previous deadline for restructuring KSEB into three separate companies for generation, transmission and distribution, as stipulated in the Electricity Act of 2003, was to expire on December 9, 2007.

The State Government, however, was able to convince the Union Electricity Minister that it would complete the exercise within the next six months after studying the report of the committee it had set up to look into how to go about the task.

The Electricity Minister, Mr A.K. Balan, said here on Thursday that the restructuring of the board was originally slated to be completed on June 9, 2004, as per the Act.

But since then, the deadline had been extended four times under the previous United Democratic Front (UDF) Government and three times during the present Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government. The Minister said that the Government had, in between, set up a committee on November 18, 2006, to study the pros and cons of the restructuring process.

The committee had since submitted its report, which would be presented before the State Cabinet for taking a decision, he said.

Mr Balan, however, made it clear that the restructured entities would remain under one umbrella and within the public sector. There is no question of privatising the companies, he added.

No load-shedding

The Minister said that the Government would avoid resorting to load-shedding this year also. A meeting of the top officials of the board and Power Department was held on Thursday to discuss the ways to be adopted to ensure that there was no load-shedding in the State in the coming summer season.

These included cutting down peak load consumption through voluntary restrictions on unnecessary use of power for illumination purposes and in homes and offices.

Reservoir capacity

Mr. Balan said that the maximum storage capacity of the State’s hydel reservoirs was 100 days of rain water, which was equal to 4,000 million units, irrespective of the intensity and duration of rains. Besides, the inflow to the reservoirs had come to 500 million units from 900 million units last year.

The State is facing a shortage of 300 megawatts during peak hour. At the same time, the consumption has gone up by seven million units per day.

Despite this, the Government would strive to avoid load-shedding and power cut, the Minister said.

More Stories on : Power | Restructuring | Kerala

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