We will pay DPC all unpaid electricity bills of MSEB, which contractually fall on us," power minister Suresh Prabhu said.

The Centre was considering paying out current dues by deducting it subsequently from Maharashtra's plan allocation. "The Government of India has never failed to fulfil any of its obligations... we will never default on our contractual commitments to anyone," he said, while emphasising that all dues of DPC would be cleared soon.

DPC had, on February 6, decided to invoke the Centre's counter-guarantee after Maharashtra refused to pay its November bill of Rs 79 crore. Besides an amount of Rs 152 crore for December is also overdue to DPC.

Asked if the Centre would only pay the November bill of Rs 79 crore for which DPC had invoked central government's counter-guarantee, Mr Prabhu said, "We will pay all that is due, but this cannot go on month after month.

A viable option has to be found out so as to avoid re-ocurrance of such a crisis."

The Maharashtra government had appointed a six-member energy review committee to study the financial implications of the Dahbol power project and suggested measures to ease the situation, he said adding recommendations made by the group would guide future the course of action.

Under the contract with Enron, if there is a default on the part of the Maharashtra government, there is a contractual obligation on the Centre to make the payment.

The Maharashtra government had failed to pay Rs 79 crore (about $17 million) for the November bill even after DPC invoked state guarantee. The state has now seven days to make the payment to DPC while the Centre has 30 days to do so."We are looking at options to resolve the current problem," Mr Prabhu said.

The Maharashtra government has asked Centre to bail it out of the crisis by channelising Enron power through central power utilities, so that the state is not forced to bear the entire burden of buying DPC's expensive power.

"We are not in a position to buy the entire power from DPC nor can we bear the current burden of payment," Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said.

(PTI)