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Coal at lower prices planned

Special Correspondent

Rajasthan will produce 3,000 MW of power during the next three years, says Minister

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan Government intends to launch "captive coal mining'' for supplying coal at lower prices to thermal power plants to make the State self-sufficient in power generation. The target has been fixed to produce 3,000 MW of power during the next three years.

The Minister of State for Energy, Gajendra Singh, making the announcement in the Assembly on Wednesday, said that in addition to coal, all important resources such as lignite, gas, wind power, biomass and atomic energy would be utilised to their full capacity for producing electricity and a transmission link with the Western Grid would be established shortly.

Mr. Singh, replying to a debate on the power sector, pointed out that there was a proposal to take a joint initiative in "pit head mining'', while special attention had been paid to evolving a balance between the power generation, transmission and distribution. "The transmission and distribution losses have plummeted from 62 per cent to 22 per cent following the feeder renovation programme,'' he said.

Mr. Singh refuted the Opposition's charge that no power had been produced during the last two years and cited the figures of 264.5 MW produced in 2004-05 and 226 MW in 2005-06 while affirming that more power would be generated in the years to come. He said the target for power production was 538 MW in 2006-07 and 1,900 MW in 2007-08.

"As against the failure of the previous Congress-led Government to establish any new power project, we have decided to install new units at Chhabra in Dholpur and establish one additional unit each at Suratgarh and Kota thermal power plants,'' Mr. Singh said. He added that the work on two lignite-based units of 125 MW each at Giral would also be completed shortly.

The Minister said the Government had sanctioned a lignite-based mega power project of 1,000 MW in the private sector at Jalipa-Kapurdi in Barmer district for the first time. Besides, the cap of 350 MW in the wind power projects had been raised to 800 MW which was expected to be achieved by 2008. "The production of 3,000 MW in the next three years will be much higher than the 1,388 MW produced during the five years of Congress regime.''

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