The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has urged the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government to put on hold the proposed amendment in the Indian electricity bill, till it is discussed in detail with all the states and other stake holders including power engineers and power workers and their concerns are addressed.
AIPEF Chairman Shailendra Dubey in a letter to Union Power Minister R K Singh has expressed his concern over the reports that Central Government has decided to get the Indian Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2014 passed in coming winter session of the parliament. Dubey has also demanded review of power policies of last two decades before going on for any further amendments and series of experiments done by the previous governments at the Center. He said the experiments by the successive governments and their wrong policies have turned the power as the most sick sector of the Indian economy.
In his letter to the Union power minister the Federation said it has already submitted memorandum of objections on Electricity (Amendment) Bill to the Ministry of Power and this must be discussed in detail by the Ministry with its representatives before moving to the parliament for getting the amendment bill passed.
Dube said the Electricity Act 2003 was enacted for restoring the financial health of power sector but this Act has failed to achieve its objectives and has resulted in more than Rs 9 lakh Crore losses and piling of debt on the power distribution companies (DISCOMS). Without analyzing the causes and circumstances of failure to achieve its objective, the Government of India is undertaking an exercise to introduce more amendments which would will further aggravate the situation for the already ailing power sector, particularly the financial health of the DISCOMS in various states.
He said it’s an undisputed fact that the DISCOMs in all the starts are in poor financial health which have accumulated huge debt and losses in past several years.
The UDAY Scheme introduced by the Union government by which the State Governments have owned the responsibility to improve financial condition of the State DISCOMS and to start with taking over of the outstanding debts of the DISCOMS in a phased and time bound manner has also not yet yielded desired results.
Under these circumstances, to introduce the concept of Supply licensee so as to separate out carriage and content, it would lead to exodus of high paying and profitable consumers to the private licensees while putting the extra burden on the state owned supply licensee, the letter said.