The Tamil Nadu government on Friday urged the Centre to interconnect the southern power grid with the national grid comprising North, East, West and Northwest regions, saying “geographical location of a state should not be a handicap to buying or selling power”.
It also creates an imbalance between the southern region and rest of the country ‘disabling’ the southern region from actively participating in and benefiting from the national power market, the chief minister said.
“The geographical location of a state should not be a handicap to buying or selling electricity from or to any other state. This problem should be sorted out at the earliest,” finance minister O. Panneerselvam, who read out the speech on behalf of chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, the told 25th meeting of Southern Zonal Council, chaired by Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde in Bengaluru on Friday.
Stating that the demand-supply mismatch at present was between 3,000 and 4,000 MW in TN, Ms Jayalalithaa said it was estimated that the expected demand by the end of 12th Plan Period would be 18,311 MW whereas the present availability was only around 8,500 MW.
Pointing out the glitches in giving environmental clearances to the power projects by the Union government she said, “The North Chennai thermal power project, a major project, is ready for commissioning but revised environment clearance has not yet been given by the MoE&F.”
On the fishermen issue, she also alleged AP and Kerala fishermen had been attacking TN fishermen and damaging their boats in Bay of Bengal.