Haryana Congress has flayed the decision of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) to impose a hike of 5 paise per unit in the Fuel Surcharge Adjustment (FSA) as an unwanted tax imposed on the people of Haryana and demanded its immediate rollback.
Kiran Choudhry, leader of the Haryana Congress legislature Party (ClP) in a statement issued on Monday said that the hike, the fourth in the last ten months, would hit the common man, reeling under inflation, hard, have a cascading effect on the cost of production, and result in across-the-board price rise.
The roll-back can be made possible if the State Government takes steps to check power theft, cut down line losses, and inject a dose of efficiency in the working of discoms, she added.
The former Excise and Taxation Minister said that this is the fourth hike made in FSA in the past 10 months on the directives of the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC). With 17-paise hike in December, 2014, 60-paisa hike in March, 2015, 37-paisa hike in April and now 5-paise hike, electricity has become costlier by Rs 1.19 per unit, she pointed out.
In May, the tariff for non-domestic consumers had been hiked by about 8.5 per cent. Now, another 5 paise per unit hike in FSA will put extra burden on the common man, said Choudhry adding that all this ran counter to the BJP promise of “Achhe Din”.
She recalled how the Congress Government, keeping the interest of the people of the state, had in January, 2014, withdrawn the tariff increase of about 13 per cent made in April, 2013 for domestic consumers consuming up to 500 units per month, reduced tariff for farm sector by 60 per cent, and had decided not to hike power tariff for 2014-15.
The decision had directly benefited 38 lakh domestic consumers, about 95 per cent of the total consumers. The Khattar Government should take leaf out of the book of the Congress, she added.