Punjab Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today said the Congress led UPA government's failure to create additional fuel capacity had led to under performance by thermal plants in the State and that this had created the recent power shortage even though Punjab had achieved power surplus status in thermal capacity. Explaining the entire gamut of power operations in Punjab besides detailing the discrimination the State had experienced at the hands of the UPA, the Deputy CM said despite repeated memorandums and personal appeals by chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, the UPA government did not increase the coal supply to Punjab to cater to the new thermal capacity created in the State. He said as much as 1546 mega watt of thermal capacity was not been tapped due to paucity of coal.Badal said with the NDA government in power at the centre, things were improving.
He said in the last few days itself the coal ministry had increased coal supply to the thermal plants in the State. He said the coal ministry had also agreed to give tapering coal supply to the Talwandi Sabo plant which was in operational right now. He said these steps had already improved the power situation in the State and that it would normalize completely soon.Producing facts of power supply in Vidhan Sabha, Mr. Badal informed that there was 5700 MW gross installed capacity in 2002, which had been enhanced to 6201 MW in 2007 against the power demand of 4936 MW and 8672 MW respectively. He informed when SAD-BJP took over in 2007 there was a gap of 2471 MW between generation and consumption.He said relentless efforts being made by the State government has resulted in addition of 4231 mw in gross installed capacity including 500 MW at Lehra Mohabbat, Rajpura 1400 mw, Talwandi Sabo 660 mw and 2503 MW in center-state Long Term PPAs. Mr. Badal also said that besides this, the state was also building up generation capacity of 2084 mw.