New and Renewable Energy Ministry pulled up by Par panel
Press Trust of India / New Delhi August 10, 2010, 19:03 IST

A Parliamentary Committee has pulled up the New and Renewable Energy Ministry for blaming global recession as reason to "cover its weaknesses in implementing and monitoring wind energy related projects".

Commenting on the ministry's performance in the last fiscal, the Standing Committee on Energy observed that in the wind power sector it had achieved only 28.3 per cent of the annual target till January 2010.
"By blaming recession in the wind industry, the ministry has tried to shift the attention of the committee from their own weaknesses in implementation and monitoring to an external factor of recession," it said in its report tabled today.

The Farooq Abdullah-led Ministry had said the shortfall in achieving targets was due to recession in the industry.

"The recession might have affected the performance to some extent but the ministry took it too far to cover their own lack of sincere efforts," the report further observed.

On the ministry's performance in other new energy sectors including hydel plants and light water mills, the committee, headed by SP Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, said it was "surprised" as achievements in these sectors was far behind the target marks.

The report said the ministry could manage to produce only 1301.47 MW up to January 31 this year against the planned target of 3224 MW under off-grid programmes for the last financial year.

The Committee said it had expected the ministry to carry out periodical review of projects and initiate corrective steps to meet the goals of the 11th Five Year Plan for wind energy.

"That this was not done is nothing but regrettable," it observed and asked the ministry to implement its recommendations in letter and spirit.

It expressed "surprise" that the ministry had furnished "incomplete and insufficient" information regarding small hydro power projects, which was the most under-utilised area of the renewable energy.
NTPC performance comes under CAG scanner
Press Trust of India / New Delhi August 05, 2010, 20:20 IST

Government auditor the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) today said that it is conducting a performance audit on NTPC, the country's largest power producer, and expects to come out with a report by March.

"We are conducting a performance audit on NTPC power generation capacity. We will come up with a finding in six months," Deputy CAG Sunil Verma told reporters here.

He said CAG will look into capacity-utilisation and management of the projects to see if the state-run power generation company is working in its full capacity.

"We will see whether NTPC is managing the existing projects well so that power generation is as per capacity," he said.

The current electricity generation capacity of the company is over 32,000 Mw and it is planning to take it to 50,000 Mw by March 2012.

When asked if CAG will look into NTPC's order with Technopromexports of Russia, a CAG official said, "That would also come under the purview of the audit."

NTPC had placed an order for power equipment for its Barh Stage-I project in Bihar on Technopromexports, which was delayed due to contractual disputes with the Russian firm.