ANANTAPUR: The State Government's decision to discontinue free power supply to farmers who don't fix capacitors to their pumpsets by this month-end is likely to force majority of farmers here to cough up power bills from April.

Farmers' response to the Government pre-condition of getting capacitors fixed to their agriculture motor pumpsets has been lukewarm so far. Only 12,200 pumpsets have been fixed with capacitors. The total number of farmers connections in the district is about 1.29 lakhs.

Despite efforts by the officials of Central Power Distribution Company to educate the farmers the latter have not been forthcoming to the idea mainly due to financial problems. Lack of awareness too is a major problem.

Nearing deadline

As only a few days remain for the deadline most of the farmers are in the danger of getting the free power supply discontinued. Superintendent Engineer of CPDCL B. Veera Reddy, however, is optimistic that farmers would get the capacitors fixed.

Awareness wave

He stated that they had tried to create awareness on the necessity of having the capacitors fixed to their pumpsets during rythu chaitanya yatra, rythu sadassus and sub-station wise farmers' meeting held to decide the power supply timings. He explained that farmers' response had been encouraging in Anantapur, Kadiri and Rayadurg areas.

The Government had also asked the farmers to have pumpsets, foot valves, and PVC pipes only with ISI mark by March 2008 to get free power supply.

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