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        The Working Group’s recommendations are based on the Central Electricity Authority’s assessment of the requirement for meeting the objective of providing electricity for all by the year 2012. The country needs to be free from power shortages. This is essential if power as a key infrastructure is not to become a constraint for sustaining the GDP growth rate of 8 to 9% as envisaged.

        The overall share of capacity addition in Central Sector during Tenth Plan period is likely to be 24000 MW which would be 45% of the overall capacity planned during the Plan.

        The capacity addition of about 28000 MW in thermal in all sectors planned for the Tenth plan period includes addition of 660 MW units of state of the art Super Critical Technology to be set up by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Sipat, Kahalgaon, Barh and North Karanpura projects.

        About 17,000 MW of hydro capacity during the Tenth Plan period is also planned to be added.

        The Planning Commission has been requested for provision of adequate funds in the Tenth Plan for the Central sector as well as for the State sector. States have also been requested to make adequate Plan provisions for the Tenth Plan for capacity addition. The share of power in the total Plan outlay has been falling over the last few Plans and it is necessary to reverse this trend.

        Necessary lessons have been drawn from the experience of the Ninth Plan where there has been significant shortfall in capacity addition. Consequently an effective monitoring mechanism for review of critical milestones of all identified projects for the Tenth Plan has been made operational to cut down delays in clearances, sanctions, placement of orders for Main plant and equipment and removal of bottlenecks.