Hundreds of Samajwadi Party (SP) activists on Monday held a demonstration here in protest against the power distribution companies’ (discoms) proposal, reportedly submitted to the OERC, for a hike in electricity tariff.
The party also submitted a memorandum to the Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) urging it not to accept the proposal and direct the Government to fulfill other demands.
“The discoms have appealed to the OERC for a power tariff hike. The Gridco has appealed to hike price of a unit of power from `2.77 to `3.53 paise. If electricity tariff is hiked, common people will suffer a lot,” said the memorandum.
The other demands of the party include stopping of undeclared power cuts, ensuring of CAG audit and energy audit, cancellation of franchises for metre and billing and reduction of transmission loss to 15 per cent.
A representative team led by party State president Rabi Behera submitted the memorandum to OERC Chairman UN Behera.
The party urged the OERC to direct the discoms to ensure uninterrupted power supply in both rural and urban areas during the current exam season. Stating that the transmission loss in Odisha is around 42 per cent against national average of 15 per cent, Behera said if only one per cent transmission loss can be reduced, an annual revenue of `80 crore can be saved. But the discoms aren’t taking corrective measures,” noted the memorandum.
Alleging that different private have looted away `30,000 crore since reforms began in power sector, the party urged the OERC to direct the State Goverment to recover the money from them.
Among others, Sudarshan Pradhan, Bijaya Behera, Pradeep Mishra, Sanjay Nayak, Sambit Das, Subrat lenka
and women leaders Rita Pattnaik and Sabitri Behera were present.