Pushed to the wall over one of the worst ever power crisis state is facing Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav tried to wriggle out by putting blame of Centre’s court and the rebuttal came within hours when Union Minister of State for Power Piyush Goel said Uttar Pradesh was free to purchase as much power it needs – thus placing the record straight.

The war of words between the State and Centre over prevailing power crisis was expected as for the last two days Akhilesh Yadav had been blaming the Centre for the power crisis in Uttar Pradesh. He had blamed Centre for not supplying full quota of electricity to Uttar Pradesh.

CM had been asking Centre to provide the state’s full quota of 6,082 mw of power from the Central sector as presently UP was getting just 4,402 mw. “If the Centre gives us entire quota then the state government would increase the power availability in the rural areas from 12 to 14 hours immediately,’ Yadav said.

On Friday Goel said in Delhi: “Uttar Pradesh Government had been purchasing full quota of electricity from Jhajhar till a few days back. What is preventing the UP Government to purchase its quota of electricity now. The honourable Chief Minister of UP is free to utilize his quota. The Centre is ready to allocate that.”

Union Minister’s plainspeak forced Akhilesh to take a divergent stand and this time he blamed Centre for not giving enough coal to run thermal stations. “I have asked the Centre to allot more coal blocks to the state and its thermal power units for generation electricity in full strength,” he told reporters.

The state government has also sent a letter to Union Government saying coal supply to the thermal power station in the state is erratic leading to low generation in the thermal power stations.

“If Centre supplies us full quota of coal the state thermal units would generate enough electricity to meet the demand,” he said in the letter.

The UP government at present is purchasing power worth over Rs 15 crore daily from the private companies to meet its power demand. At present against the demand of 11,800 mw of power in

the state, the UP government was supplying  11,572 mw. As per the schedule, the villages and tehsils are getting 12 hour electricity, the smaller towns 15 hours, divisional headquarters 19 hours and big cities 20 hours daily.

The state government had gone for an agreement to purchase 1000 mw from western states but due to overloading on the western grid, the power could not be brought to UP.