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HYDERABAD: With increasing protests by farmers over erratic power supply, the Government has stepped up efforts to tide over the crisis by increasing generation from Srisailam to 800 MW, purchasing additional power and urging the Centre to immediately supply 500 MW from the "unallocated" energy.

Disclosing this to reporters here on Monday, Power Minister Mohd. Ali Shabbir and

Additional expenditure

Major Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshamaiah said that apart from overdrawing from the Central generating stations, 100 MW was being purchased since Sunday from West Bengal and Calcutta Electricity Company.

In all, the State was spending an additional Rs.4.8 crores a day to improve power availability.

The additional expenditure for purchase of power was estimated at Rs.121 crores this month. The State had also sought additional power from Orissa.

The Ministers said the unit eight (110 MW) of the Kothagudem Thermal Power Station was expected to be back in service by Monday evening and the 10th unit (250 MW) soon. Another 210 MW unit of the Rayalaseema Thermal Power Station would start operation from January 10. About 150-550 MW was proposed to be purchased in January.

The procurement and drawal from Central stations would cost around Rs.125 crores next month.

Shabbir for Delhi

Meanwhile, Mr. Shabbir Ali is rushing to Delhi on Tuesday to meet Union Power Minister S. K. Shinde to press the State's request for 500 MW of unallocated power.

The Centre had indicated that 250 MW of unallocated power would be given besides agreeing to supply 115 MW from the Kaiga Atomic Plant.

Admitting that the Government was unable to supply power for seven hours uninterruptedly, they said the State was facing a shortage of 2,400 MW in view of the sudden tripping of a 1,000 MW unit of the Simhadri plant and outages at other units since December 11.

The Ministers appealed to the Opposition not to politicise the issue and to cooperate with the Government in meeting the situation.

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