Raising questions about the timing, efficacy and legal grounding of the order issued on Thursday by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC) to increase power tariffs, one of the trio of top officials in the commission filed a dissenting note.
Indicating that the State government wrote the entire order by proxy, TNERC member S. Nagalsamy wrote: “The commission never met in the last three months of this tariff exercise, except once. Even this was to finalise the dates for the public hearing. We have never discussed this tariff hike. Who has arrived at this tariff slab?”
“When I insisted on this point, the chairman and the other member said it was prepared by the consultant. But when I encountered the consultant, he disowned it.”
‘No reasonable replies’
He also pointed out that there had been no reasonable replies to the questions raised by the public at the three hearings held across the State. Citing several of them, Mr. Nagalsamy said the Tangedco did not reply to any of the letters from the commission requesting information and data. As a result, adequate information was not available in the public domain to make a decision on the merits of the increase.
Uninterrupted supply The commission also failed to ensure uninterrupted power supply and regulate other activities of the Tangedco, but was eager to increase the tariff even without a formal petition from the power utility.
“I agree with many of these [questions] as they are relevant and valid,” he said. “The commission should restrain itself from giving a tariff shock and it should raise the tariff in a phased manner. Moreover, the power utility has not taken any tangible measures to reduce the expenditure on any of its activities. Load-shedding has continued for the last six years, and the utility has failed in its basic responsibility of supplying uninterrupted power at a reasonable rate.”
Inconvenient reactions All these years, the public hearings were held in the major urban hubs of Madurai, Tiruchi and Coimbatore, besides the capital city. “Peculiarly this year, they have changed the venues and conducted them in other centres like Erode to avoid inconvenient reactions,” Mr. Nagalsamy wrote.
Another anomaly was that while the original proposal recommending a tariff hike, released in October, mentioned that the power utility’s revenue gap was Rs.6,854 crore, it was brought down to Rs.5,447 in Thursday’s order.
“How it happened? Nobody knows,” he wrote.
The TNERC’s order mentions that Mr. Nagalsamy issued a separate order which was added as a a dissenting order.
