Some state governments have said that they are being made to subsidise solar power through the bundling scheme as the bundled price would be higher than what they would have paid normally for the unallocated quota. Have you received any communications from the states on this? What is your response?
The unallocated power is not available to states directly. Through bundling, additional power is being made available to the states. In fact, many states want us to sanction more capacity of solar power in their territory under this arrangement.

The initiative has been welcomed by the industry. But it feels that it needs more clarity on the post 2013 scenario, in order to facilitate investments. What is your view?
The policy framework for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission is clear, consistent and investor-friendly. The unambiguous target is to create solar power generation capacity of 20,000 Mw by 2022. I do agree that the progress in the first three years will define the path for the remaining years of the mission. But I am confident that with the support of industry and academia, we will not only achieve but surpass the targets of the mission in all areas – achieving generation capacity, achieving grid parity, developing local manufacturing and building indigenous capacity.

The industry perception is that solar thermal is not yet a proven technology whereas solar photovoltaic is. The policy, however, seems to be putting emphasis on solar thermal. Why this so?
The policy is technology neutral. The mission would like both solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies to be developed, manufactured and deployed in the country. However, it is not correct to say that the solar thermal power generation is not a proven technology as a large numbers of projects have been set up in other parts of the world. Under the mission we will offer fair opportunities for both technologies to be developed, especially in the first phase. Thereafter, the technologies will have to compete with each other to achieve grid parity as early as possible.

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