People buy hand fans due to unscheduled power cuts in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 10: People in most parts of the state today could not watch the live telecast of the Union budget speech because of scheduled and unscheduled power cuts.

“Power went off just 15 minutes after the budget presentation begun,” said Prafulla Kumar Mohanty, 76, a retired police officer, who stays in Cuttack district’s Niali block.

Thousands faced a situation similar to Mohanty’s today and even the Assembly was hit by power cut.

The Opposition launched a blistering attack on the state government for its failure to provide uninterrupted power supply.

“In the past 14 years, no step has been taken for infrastructure development in Odisha. The common man is suffering because of a faulty power policy,” said BJP legislature leader Basant Panda.

Admitting that the state was facing acute power shortage, energy minister Pranab Prakash Das said: “The state has a shortfall of between 450MW and 500MW power. While the state’s requirement is 3,100MW, it could only arrange 2,650MW.”

Hydroelectricity generation has been hit because of the weak monsoon, said the minister. “Last year, we were able to generate around 1,000MW power. But this time, we can only manage between 450MW and 500MW,” the minister informed the Assembly.

The state gets 650MW power from thermal sources, 600MW from Coal Gasification Power Plant and Independent Power Producer, 900MW from central sectors and 100MW from power exchange and other sources.

“Keeping Odisha’s demand in mind, we have asked all the captive power plants to stop selling power outside the state from July 1,” said the minister.

Gridco director P.K. Pradhan said: “We have 34 captive power plants. They used to sell nearly 200MW to 250MW of power outside the state. Now, they have been told to supply their surplus power to the state.”

However, the minister is hopeful that the power situation in the state would improve once the monsoon picks up.