India will fall short of meeting its five-year plan target of increasing power generation capacity to 78,000 MW by 2012,just as it missed the 10th Plan goal,Power Minister Sushil kumar Shinde said. His pessimism was not altogether unwarranted with Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia too saying that capacity addition would be short of target by around 8,000 MW. "We are hopeful of adding 70,000 MW power generation capacity and with some extra effort we may be able to get to 78,000 MW power generation capacity as targeted in the 11th plan (2007-12)," Ahluwalia told reporters. Shinde said: "There would be a gap of 6,000 to 7,000 MW between the targeted power generation capacity addition of 78,000 MW in the 11th plan and actual delivery on the ground due to coal shortage and gas shortage." In the 10th plan period ending 2007,the country had fallen short of the capacity addition target by almost 50 per cent. India added 20,950 MW of capacity,against a target of 41,110 MW. Although both Shinde and Ahluwalia said that capacity addition would be short of target,the target itself has not been formally scaled down.
