Raipur, May 06, 2013
The Youth Congress (YC) gheraoed Chhattisgarh state electricity regulatory commission (CSERC)
in protest against power tariff hike proposed by power companies on Monday. The YC’s state vice president Deepak Mishra alleged that the power companies
wanted to compensate their financial loss by hiking power tariff.
“The power companies wasted Rs 460
crore on pretext of establishment cost without framing any policy and
eventually incurred huge loss. Now they aim
to compensate the loss by putting additional financial burden on power
consumers,” he said.
He pointed that while public sector
undertakings and private players were generating power at the rate of Rs 1.25
per unit, the state power companies were taking power generation cost from consumers
at the rate of Rs 3.05 per unit.
He
alleged that the power companies were buying electricity at higher rate from
the private players to benefit the latter and then charging more tariff to
consumers.
He
said the state consumers were also paying high transmission cost. “The
transmission cost in Chhattisgarh is 27 paise per unit while in other states it
is 12-13 paise per unit,” he added.
Similarly,
he said, in Chhattisgarh the line loss is 30% while in other states it is
15-20%. “The power companies recover additional line loss charges from
consumers,” he said.
Pointing
towards CAG report that said power companies recovered Rs 252 crore from
consumers by imposing double tax, Mishra said the additional amount taken from
the people should be returned.
He
further objected over proposal of power tariff hike being made in English
language. “According to Supreme Court directives, such proposals should be in
common language, i.e. Hindi and if sought the copy of the proposal should be
given to people gratis,” he said.
“Why
will people shell out extra bucks for incapability of power companies? The
proposal of the power companies is not justified and hence power tariff should
not be hiked,” he said.
He
warned that the YC would strongly protest CSERC’s hearings for proposed power
tariff hike in coming days.
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