Power generation: States, private sector outdo Centre?

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The Narendra Modi government might be going gaga over its performance in power generation, but when it comes to achieving targets it has performed worse than most state governments and even the private sector, according to a Central Electricity Authority (CEA) report. 

 The report recently released by the CEA on the power sector performance during the 12th Five-Year Plan, revealed that while state governments have met 149 per cent of their target in power capacity addition, the Centre's performance was not even 65 per cent,  or 35 per cent less than the target it is to achieve in the 12th plan. Even the private sector has done much better work in power capacity addition by achieving 13 per cent more than the target it was assigned for, the report stated. 

 According to the report, the Union government was to add 26,182 Mwatt capacity ~ 14,878 MW in thermal sector, 6004 in hydro sector, and 5,300 in nuclear sector. However, it could add only 17047 MW of total capacity ~ 11,304 MW capacity less than what it has planned for. It performed poorly in all sectors and added only 13463 MW in thermal power, 2584 in hydro sector and 1000 MW in nuclear sector. 

 On the contrary, state governments did amazing work. As against their target of adding 15,530 MW, they added 23,162 MW capacity Private sector was no less in its performance and added 6,500 MW capacity more as against its target of 46825 MW. 

Thanks to the performance of  private sector and state governments total targets of 12th plan for capacity addition of 88,537 MW were met. The overall capacity addition in power sector was nearly 4998 MW more than what it planned in the 12th plan, said the CEA report.