A lineman climbed a pole to disconnect the power supply to a local police station in Uttar Pradesh. A policeman asked: “What are you doing?” He coolly replied: “The other day you had imposed a fine of ₹1,000 on me for not wearing a helmet. Your police station owes dues, running into thousands of rupees, to our (electricity) department.”
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Many government offices and departments in various States have to go without power, if the same principle is applied to them. The total dues to public sector discoms, in the country, payable by the government offices and establishments is ₹76,000 crore, and in addition to this, the State governments owe ₹78,000 crore to the discoms for providing free power to farmers and subsidised power to weaker sections, says Shailendra Dubey, chairman, All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF).
Mr. Dubey was in the city to participate in the roundtable on the ‘Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022, organised by the AP State Power Employees JAC (APSPE JAC) recently.
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“The power generation capacity of India is 4 lakh mw and 49.5% of the installed capacity is already in private hands. The Cente is keen on privatising the entire power sector, ignoring the interests of farmers and common consumers, to benefit the corporate groups,” Mr. Dubey said in a chat with The Hindu.
“The amendment bill provides for operation of more than one distributor (licensee) in an area. We are not against healthy competition but this bill allows private players to ‘mint money’ in the name of ‘distribution’ and the government discoms have to spend thousands of crores of rupees on maintenance of distribution lines and assets besides adding new infrastructure,” he alleged.
The average cost of service for every unit of power is ₹7.45 paise. The State-owned discoms are providing an average of 55 paise subsidy on each unit to domestic consumers. This subsidy is being recovered by charging higher tariff for industries and commercial consumers (cross subsidy).
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The new licensing policy allows for ‘cherry picking’ and the private players would only choose the profitable sectors like industrial and commercial consumers, where they can get higher returns. The government discoms, by default, would incur losses as they would be left with rural and domestic consumers, who would not be willing to pay higher tariff.
Mr. Dubey alleges that the Centre was planning to push the public sector discoms into losses and later sell their assets to the private corporate groups. The amended rules could result in the tariff for farmers, using agricultural pumpsets of 7.5 HP for six hours, a day, ending up paying ₹34,000 a month.
Withdrawing the draconian bill is the only way to protect the interests of common consumers, he added.