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Our Bureau

Govt working for consensus on distribution, pricing

REWARDING PERFORMANCE: The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the Minister for Power, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, at the presentation of national awards to power utilities for meritorious performance in the Capital on Wednesday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi March 21

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said on Wednesday that the Government would tackle electricity theft and distribution losses on a war footing and work for a broad national consensus on power distribution and pricing reforms.

"High transmission and distribution losses and theft of electricity are unacceptable. These need to be tackled on a war footing,'' the Prime Minister said here after giving away national awards to the power utilities.

National consensus

Mr Singh said reforms in power distribution and pricing, which were vital for commercial viability and sustainability of the power sector, had not received adequate attention in the past.

He said there was a need to forge a broad national consensus on these reforms.

The Prime Minister said the demand for power had outstripped the supply and the shortages remained a constraint on the development and livelihoods of people.

"It is indeed regrettable that across the country power shortage in varying degrees still remain a constraint on development and livelihoods,'' he said, adding the total addition of generation capacity in Tenth Five-Year Plan was just about 50 per cent of what had been targeted. Even in a premium State such as Maharashtra, children were not able to study during examination times because of power outages, he said. ``That's the measure of our gap. We must introspect what is it that has gone wrong,'' he said.

The Prime Minister said the Government was giving attention to hydro electricity and given the geographical concentration of hydel generation, an efficient transmission was required to transmit power from far off sources to load centres. Once the Southern regional grid was synchronised with the 90,000 MW National Grid in the 11th Plan, the entire country's transmission system would operate as one large interconnected grid, he said.

Meanwhile, several power utilities were honoured with national awards for their performance. These include NTPC, Powergrid, NEEPCO, NHDC, Reliance Energy, and APTransco among others.

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