The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Committed to free power: YSR

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 16, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Committed to free power: YSR

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, FEB.15. The Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, today reiterated that providing free power to all needy farmers is the Government's policy. As envisaged in the policy, 90 per cent of farmers would enjoy free power for meeting their agricultural needs.

He was speaking after releasing publicity material brought out by the Transco for enlightening farmers on saving power.

According to a press release issued by the Chief Minister's Office, Dr. Reddy asked Transco officials to bring out publicity material for the benefit of farmers on other aspects such as continued advantage to small farmers, provision of 50,000 new free connections every year and one lakh tatkal connections.

He wanted them to make consumers understand how the policy would not make any difference in extending free power to the needy. Even those who were IT assessees and take up cultivation as hobby would get power at highly subsidised tariff, the Chief Minister noted. He desired that the steps that would enable consumers to save expenditure on maintenance of appliances and conserve power should be publicised extensively. The release said the steps to be taken for saving power were incorporated in the policy which proposed to reduce the unit rate from 50 to 20 paise for those consumers who adopt power-saving methods.

Rachel Chatterjee, Transco CMD, and P.M.K. Gandhi, director, were among those present.

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