Pesu officials listen to a complaint at a redressal camp in Patna on Monday. BSEB top bosses received just 30 complaints on Monday. A source said the very low turnout was a surprise, especially after 150 people lodged complaints in January and 162 people in February. BSEB spokesperson HR Pandey attributed the low turnout to the number of camps being organised in the districts. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, March 14: Power situation in the state remained grim for the second consecutive day after the central allocation of electricity remained low against the scheduled quota.

The state received 1,032MW of electricity against the scheduled quota of 1,722 MW from the central sector allocation after power generation came to a halt at National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) Farakka unit.

Bihar received 877MW from the central sector after NTPC’s two thermal power stations at Farakka (unit 1) and Kahalgaon (unit 2) shut down on Sunday. However, the allocation from the central sector improved on Monday as the Kahalgaon unit started working.

“We received 948MW in the morning, which increased to 1,032MW in late evening. Power generation has started in unit number 2 of the Kahalagon-based NTPC thermal power plant,” Bihar State Electricity Board spokesman H.R. Pandey told The Telegraph.

However, Farakka unit 1 would take some more days to start generating power as it has been closed for 10 days because of shortage of water, Pandey said.

He added: “We have a treaty with Bangladesh on Ganga water sharing, especially relating to the sharing of the river water at Farakka. The two countries share the water for 10 days on a rotation basis.”

Bihar gets around 50MW from Farakka’s unit 1, which generates a total of 200MW, he added. Besides 1,032MW from the central sector, Bihar received around 80MW from its Kanti Thermal Power Plant, which takes it to 1,112MW of power at its disposal to meet the energy requirement of the entire state.

Out of the 1,112MW, BSEB provides 413MW to Patna, which remained unaffected with the cut in central allocation, 350MW for emergency services leaving around 350MW for the rest of the state.

Essential services for which 350MW was required included 60MW to Nepal (according to the agreement with the central government), 90MW to railways, 75MW to continuous process industries, 35MW to defence, airports, agriculture, university, dairy.