NEW DELHI. Dec 31. India's power sector continued to grope in the dark in 1996 making it the single major obstacle to growth even as a desperate government kept announcing sops for private sector participation in a bid to bridge public sector deficiencies, reports PTI.

So grave is the situation that the entire northern India was plunged into darkness for hours together early this month as power-starved states overdrew from the northern grid resulting In its total collapse.

Only one of the eight much-touted fast track projects, the Gvk groups Jegrupadu project in Andhra Pradesh, went on stream this year even as fresh controversies and litigations shrouded the fate of Enron's Dabhol Power Project in Maha rashtra and Cogentrix's Manga

lore Thermal Project.

The issues of under-pricing of power for agriculture and household sector, burgeoning losses of state utilities leading to insurmountable payment problems, ecological matters and alarming rate of redundancies of existing generating units on the face of unbelievable high transmission and distribution losses plagued this highly capital intensive core sector.

Lack of investors' confidence amidst a host of policy and operational problems made the ambitious government programme of private participation a near flop as only 380 MW of capacity addition from nongovernment sector is being expected in the current financial