Power cut only for one hour in city

Hyderabad: Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayana Reddy on Monday said that the government had decided to give some relief to the people from power cuts. Addressing a media conference here, he said that the duration of power cut would be reduced from three hours to one hour in five cities - Hyderabad, Warangal, Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.

He explained that the power cuts in district headquarters would be reduced to two hours from four hours and the towns will face four- hour power cuts instead of six hours. He said that the mandal headquarters and villages would have to bear six hour power instead of eight hours. A decision to this effect was taken as the demand from agriculture sector had come down considerably.

"The farmers stopped raising crops in many regions for want of water", he said Power consumption in the state, he said, which was in the order of 310mu in March 2013, came down to 302mu in April 2013. He said that the Transco was able to supply some 255 mu against the demand of 302 mu in April. The gap between demand and supply was around 47mu a day.

He said that the government had requested the Centre for 500mw of additional power, but it succeeded to get only 100 mw. He said that the Centre agreed to supply 26 mw more power from Simhadri Power Station and another 60mw from the central grid.