We are at a dilemma whether to believe the Chief Minister or not, when he said he is drawing up an action plan for 20 hours power supply to the consumers daily. We sincerely want to believe in him, but prevailing conditions speak otherwise. The state power department is supplying only 3-4 hours of power daily. So a question naturally comes to the lips of the general public, as to how the Chief Minister is going to do that. How is going to juggle up enough power to ensure 20 hours power supply? Does he have enough money to buy power from the market? How long can his new government bear the ATC losses? If the Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh is also a magician, we will certainly believe him. For starters, there are only 1.50 lakh registered consumers in the valley which has an approximate population of 20 lakhs. It is about 7.5 percent only. As the Chief Engineer of Joint Regulatory Commission (JERC) for Mizoram & Manipur said recently in the JERC state advisory committee meeting, the figure is absurd. In Mizoram state with an approximate population of 9 lakhs, the number of registered consumers is 1.75 lakhs. This is understandable. In Manipur’s case, a realistic figure would be about 3.8 lakh consumers. From this, we can safely deduce that there are more than 2 lakh unauthorized consumers in the Manipur valley, who are using power without paying a cent leading to a wide gap between revenue and expenditure. Secondly, we have to take into account, the Transmission & Distribution losses. In the year 2011-12, ATC losses is about 60 percent including 37 percent T & D losses, which in fact decreased from about 65 percent in the year 2009-10. According to information given by the Power department, the Chief Minister had recently sanctioned 20 crores of rupees for purchase of power over and above the 15 crores sanctioned earlier. Yet, the question remains as to whether the money sanctioned would be enough to tide over the power crisis and manage the ever widening gap. Thirdly, the gap between the demand and supply during peak hour is widening from 2 megawatts in 2005-06 to 65 megawatts in the year 2010-11, which led to regular load shedding and unscheduled shutdowns. Due to this load shedding and unscheduled shutdowns, power based industry and business is suffering, while it has led to widespread dissatisfaction among the consumers which in turn affects the revenue collection. Time and again, we have stated that consumer satisfaction is necessary for the consumers to pay bills regularly. Fourthly, Manipur’s allocated share of power from the Central Sector Generating Stations is 132.57 megawatts including 31.65 megawatts from Loktak Hydro-electric project. This will be increased by 20 megawatts in August this year with the commissioning of Pallatana Thermal Power project in Tripura. Yet, during the lean season the generation of the Loktak project is substantially reduced with only one turbine out of three functioning. On the other hand, the 6×6 MW Leimakhong Heavy Fuel based power plant is a captive generating plant to be used only at the time of emergency, due to high costs. Again, the regional sources of power from which Manipur draws its scheduled energy are predominantly hydel which are based on optimal quantum of rainfall in a year. And as such, availability of power varies between 3 seasons which are summer, winter and moonson. In such a backdrop, the Chief Minister’s statement should be taken with a pinch of salt. In the short term, Manipur could ask for additional support from the centre for increasing its buying power. But, in the long term we have no other alternative but to take over the Loktak HE project. If the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir could take a decisive step towards taking over three hydel projects from the centrally owned NHPC, why could we take such a step? In fact, we must.
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