CM vetoes relief to striking staff

HYDERABAD: Orders issued by officers under force in favour of agitating staff were not valid and all such orders stand cancelled.Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, at a review meeting with ministers and officials on Monday evening, took a decision to this effect, after T activists forced transport commissioner to keep in abeyance the notices issued to contract staff seeking explanation why action should not be taken against them. He also wanted cases booked against those who had manhandled an assistant transport commissioner, holding him responsible for issuing the notices.Similarly, the APSRTC is coming under tremendous pressure to cancel notices that it had issued to the contract staff. In this context, the chief minister’s directions assume importance and might kindle more trouble.As T movement is promising more trouble, the chief minister directed that there should be enough security at coal mines since there was a possibility of the strikers disrupting the mining activity which has increased substantially during the last few days.As regards power generation, he wanted the officials to improve supply by purchasing power, coal and gas from other states and grids to minimise hardship to farmers The officials informed him that due to unlimited consumption by agricultural sector because of dry spell, load relief has been enhanced all over the State. Even power is being purchased from other states, due to technical problems like corridor availability and due to forced outage of units, Kerala withdrew the sale of power to AP.The shortage of power increased all over the state.Presently the demand is around 262 million units.Discoms are able to meet around 240 MU per day. The power cuts are inevitable all over the state due to the short fall of around 22 MU.At present, inflows have come down to around 10,000 cusecs into Srisailam. As a result it is forced to reduce the hydel generation to 38 MU from 65 to 66 MU.Officials also informed that AP Transco was resorting to overdrawl from the grid to an extend of around 1.1 MU per day. It was drawing 100 to 200 MW from Kerala as against the original quantity of 300 MW. From Haryana, another 200 MW was being procured from Sept 24 and it will continue till Sept 30 on swap basis and 335 MW is being procured from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.