Consumers facing uninformed power cut for hours on daily basis across the State must get ready to bear another major ‘shock’ in days to come. The government has already started an exercise to revise the electricity tariff increasing it to the tune of at least three times of the current rate.
Addressing media persons in press conference here on Wednesday Additional Chief Secretary of Energy Department RK Srivastava said that a revision request of power tariff in State has already been sent to the concerned authority, which if approved may rest at anywhere around 3 times of current electricity tariff for domestic use.
Srivastava said that the current electricity tariff for domestic use at base price is Rs 1.98 per unit, which sums up with different taxes to rest at little over Rs 3 per unit. But the purchase price of electricity is Rs 5 per unit in Jharkhand. “The difference in purchase price and selling price results in some Rs 2,500 crore yearly. No State can keep funding this for a long time.
This is why we have sent our proposal for revision of electricity tariff with calculations to Jharkhand State Electricity Regulatory Commission (JSERC), which is expected to take appropriate decision soon.
We want new tariff to be purchasing cost added by at least 15 per cent profit,” said Srivastava. If this is accepted, the base price for electricity will be around Rs 6 per unit, resulting in more than Rs 8 per unit after adding certain taxes to end-users.
However, JSERC in its recent meeting opined that power tariff hike was not an issue of simple arithmetic and Commission needed to look at multiple issues related to it before fixing new price.
It said that tariff increase was not to take place at the will of one particular board or company alone. Srivastava also added that the final call regarding this was to be taken by JSERC itself.
Srivastava said that a sum of Rs 14,000 crore each would be invested on developing infrastructure of transmission and distributions separately by 2018-19. Plans are on cards to arrange these funds. JUVNl and JBVNl MD Rahul Purwar said that meeting of resource gap and an uninterrupted power supply to all consumers in State has been targeted by 2018-19.
He said that a joint venture company called Patratu Vidyut Utpadan Nigam limited for adding up 4,000 MV electricity production has already been floated under agreement of JBVNl and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) on October 15 last year.
land acquisition for new thermal plant under this has been successfully done and land transfer is in process.
Srivastava said that transmission of electricity and bill recovery from consumers remained one of the major challenges in the State.
“There are 35 sub-stations in function in State and we are in process of constructing at least 67 more, most probably by year end itself. Whereas the bill recovery is concerned, we will recruit Urja Mitras. There will be one Urja Mitra on every 1,000 domestic consumers, who will not only remind them of their pending bills but will also assist them in paying the dues,” said Srivastava.
He added that the computerization of entire process of monitoring from electricity production to bill payment and is also on cards and this is expected to take place by 2018-19.
“One of the major issues of electrification of villages is of forest clearance.
It is noticed that it has consumed four years to get one forest clearance in a number of cases and places. land acquisition is another issue in terms of availability of usable land.