Union power minister Piyush Goyal had launched a blistering attack against chief minister J Jayalalithaa during campaigning for assembly elections, alleging that it was only the Tamil Nadu chief minister that he was unable to meet to discuss national power sector issues.

After Jayalalithaa hit back strongly, BJP senior leader and union cabinet minister M Venkaiah Naidu, issued a statement that he never had any problems in meeting the chief minister and so did another minister Nirmala Sitaraman to calm the AIADMK supremo.

On Friday, Goyal called on the chief minister for a formal meeting and later told media persons that the request of the chief minister on power sector projects as also for erecting a transmission corridor to enable Tamil Nadu sell surplus solar power to other states, the union minister said it would be part of the Green Corridor project sanctioned by the prime minister.

“The prime minister Narendra Modi has cleared Rs 40,000 crore for the green corridor in South India and Tamil Nadu is also a beneficiary in this,” the union power minister said after calling on the chief minister.

He also said that already, he has had held fruitful discussions with Karnataka government on this particular green corridor.

Few days ago, chief minister Jayalalithaa had sought the intervention of prime minister Modi to direct the Power Grid Corporation to allocate dedicated transmission capacity to evacuate surplus wind power from the state.

Jayalalithaa has been stressing the need for setting up an inter-state Green Energy Corridor so that the surplus wind energy from Tamil Nadu can be successfully sold to other States.

Non-conventional energy sources have become viable, the minister said adding that the central government bought solar power at a cost of around Rs 4 per unit, which is almost at part with the cost of traditional power sources.

The minister had earlier inaugurated a thermal cold storage and a research park at IIT Madras.

The minister also inaugurated a display of innovative solar-DC products and appliances developed by IITM and its incubated renewable energy companies.