Ever since the AIADMK government under Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa assumed power in Tamil Nadu, the Centre has been ignoring her fair demands for additional power to the state that will help tide over the acute power shortage to the tune of 4,000 MW. Just a month after taking over as the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi and requested him to allocate 1,000 MW of power for one year to cope with the crisis. However, the Centre did not respond.
On December 25 last year, the Chief Minister sought a special financial package for the revival of power utilities in Tamil Nadu, since the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board is on the brink of collapse due to huge accumulated loss of over Rs 40,000 crore and an unmanageable debt amounting to more than Rs 50,000 crore. In the memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Chief Minister said the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDO) has achieved a capacity addition of 997.4 MW wind energy during 2010-11, and requested the Prime Minister to release the incentive grant of Rs 455.16 crore immediately. The request has not been met.
After many attempts by her to get additional power from the Centre proved futile, Jayalalithaa on March 9, 2011, accused the Centre of treating Tamil Nadu with callosity, and pointed out that the failure of Central authorities to set right the corridor congestion has been crippling the state from procuring power.
In yet another attempt to get some relief , on March 9, the Chief Minister requested Singh to allot the entire power (2,000 MW) to be generated at Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant to Tamil Nadu. Even this request failed to get a prompt reply from the Prime Minister. On October 24, the Chief Minister again wrote to Singh to allocate 1,721 MW of power to be surrendered by the Delhi government in coming months, to Tamil Nadu. So far, there has been no reply from the Prime Minister.