BANGALORE: Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa is learnt to have refused to head the Cabinet sub-committee that is supposed to take the crucial decision on whether to enforce loadshedding or spend heavily to buy additional power.

The State Cabinet, which met on Thursday, decided to constitute a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Yediyurappa to look into the power supply scenario.

With power consumption likely to go up in summer, the State will face a shortage of 15 million units to 23 million units per day. To tide over this, the State has to spend an additional Rs. 200 crore to Rs. 250 crore a month to buy power.

Hence, Mr. Yediyurappa had been entrusted with the responsibility of heading the Cabinet sub-committee to look into all these issues. The committee had been given a two-day deadline starting Friday to take a decision on this. Sources told The Hindu that Mr. Yediyurappa had written to the Chief Minister expressing his inability to head the panel citing his busy schedule and pre-occupation with pre-budgetary consultations.

But sources in the coalition Government said that the actual reasons for not heading the sub-committee were different. They said Mr. Yediyurappa would be faced with tough choices if he heads the committee.

Enforcing loadshedding would be an unpopular measure that could be seen as being anti-consumer, especially since there has been no loadshedding in urban areas for the last two years.

If, on the other hand, the sub-committee decides to prevent loadshedding, Mr. Yediyurappa will be hard put to find the resources to buy high cost power at Rs. 6.25 per unit, as against the State's average procurement price of about Rs. 3.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail