Shillong, February 24 2009: The North Eastern Region Committee on Power (NERCP) will ask the Government of India to fund all the mega projects in the Northeast in order to maximize inter state and intra state power evacuation, transmission and regulation of the generated power.

Taking note on the defi-cit power scene in the north eastern states , the NERCP in its sitting in Shillong on Monday and Tuesday re-solved to ask the centre to fully fund construction of transmission lines in the eight sister states, the state load and dispatched centre and also to hike the Rajiv Gandhi Gram Vidyut Yojna (RGGVY).

The deliberation that focus on assorted mega power projects and its ina-bility to supply power to the optimum discovered that lack of funds is a restraint for the states to construct the transmission lines.

The Chairman of the NERCP who is the Assam power Minister P Bordoloi told newsmen, "Power genera-ted from the region could not be evacuated and trans-mitted due to the absence of transmission lines".

"If we have the transmi-ssion lines, the power deficit and procurement from the central grid will dimi-nish", stated Bordoloi, while disclosing that all the eight sister states will meet the Prime Minister to de-mand for a full central funding on this.

Underlining the absence of the state load dispatch and control centre (SLDC) in some states as another rea-son that has stalled transfer of power in between the sister states, Bordoloi in-formed that Arunachal, Na-galand, Manipur and Mizoram should have the state of art SLDC that could regu-late, monitor and evacuate power and this could be done only if the centre agreed to provide the funds on a 90% loan and 10% to be borne by the respective state governments.

The NERCP which consider the RGGVY funds as too meagre to meet the cry for electricity.

The region's topography one reason that only 16.8% of the rural households in the region is without power .

This issue will be taken with the Prime Minister, stated Gogoi, adding, "It will be collec-tively push by all the eight sister states power minister shortly".

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