Hyderabad: Come midnight tonight, the long cherished dream of millions of farmers in Telangana will turn into a reality as the state government will unroll a 24-hour uninterrupted quality, free power supply programme for agriculture pump sets. With this, the country’s newest state will become the first in India to have 24-hour free power supply system for the farmers.

While initially it will be done on experimental basis, the full-ledged scheme will be launched from March next year, an official said.

The chief minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, reviewed the preparation for the launch of the 24-hour power supply scheme with the top officials of the power generation and supply companies.

Telangana Power Generation Corporation Chairman and Managing Director D. Prabhakar Rao said that the round the clock power supply to farmers will continue for five to six days and follow up action will be taken on the basis of the feedback.

Officials said while the preparation for the scheme was on for the last one hour, the system across the 31 districts in the state will be tested during the experimental launch. “We were already supplying the uninterrupted and quality power on experimental basis in three districts and now it was being extended to entire state”, Prabhakar Rao said.

The farmers in three districts — Medak, Karimnagar and Nalgonda — have been getting 24-hour power supply since June last and according to the officials the result has been quite satisfactory.

According to a press release form the chief minister’s secretariat, Rao directed the officials to take measures to further strengthen the power supply system to ensure 24-hour power supply to the agriculture sector from March-April 2018.

“Farmers of Telangana have suffered a lot under the United Andhra Pradesh regime due to the lack of power supply. They were not getting even three to four hours of supply. Though a major part of the cultivation was dependent on borewells, the then government neglected it,” he told the meeting.

Free power supply to the farmers was one of the major promises of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti and officials say that an amount of Rs120 billion (Dh6.8 billion) had already been spent to strengthen the power transmission system in the state.

The state has 2.3 million agriculture pump sets in areas where the farmers are dependent on the groundwater for cultivation. Officials said that power supply to all these pump sets will require 1500MW to 2000MW of additional power.