"It is true that Bihar is facing shortage of power. Against the requirement of about 1900 MW during peak hour, the state, which is heavily dependent on availability of power from the central pool, is receiving hardly between 680 MW to 750 MW on an average per day despite the allocation of 1169MW", state Energy Minister Vijendra Prasad Yadav told the assembly.

The state had already urged the Centre to provide additional 300 MW from the non-allocated quota for which an all-party delegation had gone to New Delhi in February and met the Union Power Minister. "But we are yet to receive a favourable response," Yadav said replying to a 3-hour debate on budgetary demands of his department for 2008-09.

Private investors have proposed to spend over Rs 50,000 crore for the measures to face the power crisis, he said adding the budgetary demand for the state for next fiscal is about Rs 1881 crore.

Meanwhile, the state government was expecting 222 MW from Kahalgaon super thermal power station (stage-2) and 55 MW from Teesta hydel power project (stage-5).

Both projects are likely to start generation soon, he said.