Lucknow, July 11: The All India Power Engineers Federation has urged Union Power Minister R K Singh not to introduce in haste in Parliament the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022 and instead discuss in detail with all the stakeholders, especially consumers and electricity workers.
The AIPEF has also sent a letters to Chief Ministers of all states and Union Territories urging them to take effective intervention to stop the Bill which it said has far-reaching consequences.
A meeting of the National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers has been called in Delhi on July 20 to discuss a nationwide movement against the bill.
Shailendra Dubey, Chairman AIPEF, wrote to Minister Singh on Monday stating that the draft Bill issued a few days ago is “incomplete and insufficient to amend the Electricity Act 2003”.
He said the Amendment Bill has not yet been placed on the website of the Ministry of Power, it does not contain the Statement of Objects and reasons to amend the 2003 Act and neither have comments been sought from the stakeholders.
He further wrote that when the Electricity Act 2003 was enacted, the Electricity Bill 2001 was sent to the Standing Committee on Power Affairs of the Parliament and detailed talks were held for two years with all the stakeholders.
Now if any amendment is required in the Electricity Act 2003, the same method should be adopted.
There should be complete transparency, comments should be sought from all, discussions should be held with all and it should not be passed in haste by placing in Parliament on just a few days’ notice as this amendment has far-reaching effects on electricity consumers and workers.
He said that as far as giving choice of power supply to the consumers is concerned, this is a complete hoax.
In fact, this bill will give a choice not to the consumers but to the private electricity supplying companies.
There is a provision in the bill that only the government company will have universal power supply obligation. This means only a government discom will provide electricity to all categories of consumers.
Naturally, private companies will give electricity only to profitiable industrial and commercial consumers, and government distribution companies will go into further losses by providing electricity to farmers and common consumers at below cost. Thus, the government discoms by default will become loss-making companies.
According to this bill, private companies will use the network of government discoms.
He said Government discoms have already spent billions of trillions of rupees in making this network and thousands of crores of rupees are being spent by government discoms on its maintenance.
Allowing private companies to use this network by charging only wheeling charges is totally unjust and it is a draft of privatization of entire power distribution which will be strongly opposed by the power workers.
He said that this experiment is already underway in Mumbai where Adani Power and Tata Power supply electricity in the same area. Tata Power uses Adani Power’s network. This has led to various legal disputes and the consumers have not got any relief from this.
Domestic consumers electricity tariff in Mumbai range from Rs 12 to Rs 14 per unit which is the highest in the country. Now imposing this experiment on the whole country is a fraud with the common consumers.
He further said that when private companies supply electricity using the network of government discoms, then billions of rupees will be spent on the energy accounting software to be made for this.
This was used in the UK, where such software cost 850 billion pounds 10 years ago, and this cost was collected from consumers by putting them in their bills.
