Considering the gravity of the present situation, this new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has created posts of two separate cabinet ministers for each the Power and MNRE, which were earlier handled by R. K. Singh alone. Manohar Lal Khattar is now looking after Power and Pralhad Joshi is handling MNRE. However, Shripad Naik is now serving as the Minister of State for both the ministries.
In the budget 2024-25, the Ministry of Power has been allocated Rs 20,502 crore, an increase of 16% over the revised estimate for 2023-24. MNRE has been allocated Rs 19,100 crore, an increase of 143% over the revised estimate for 2023-24.
It goes without saying that we are lagging behind our capacity addition targets. We had a target to develop 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind power by 2022. However, till June this year, the installed capacity of solar has stood at 85 GW and that of wind at 47 GW. Of course, there are reasons like: issues with land acquisition, delay in clearances, contractual disputes, disruption in global supply chain due to COVID 19 and policy uncertainty due to changes in tariff regimes and re-negotiation of power purchase agreements.
Thus, now we have to be more cautious. Otherwise, it will not be possible for us to keep the COP 26 commitments of bringing non-fossil energy capacity to 500GW and lowering carbon intensity to 45% by 2030.
Thus, I highly appreciate the prime minister’s decision to post two individual ministers for Power and MNRE. It is true that many of the charted activities of the two ministries will overlap, still I hope meticulous supervision will accelerate our journey towards the goal.
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