Basic infrastructure plays a very significant role in the life of a common man as his standard of living depends on it. Nice roads, clean drinking water, better education facilities, availability of quality food is the right of every citizen and they play as a parameter to measure the quantum of growth and development in a country. Not lately, in the month of January, 2016 that the union government has amended the National Tariff Policy for Electricity. The National Tariff Policy (NTP), 2016 has been implemented by the central ministry to lay focus on the renewable energy and sourcing of power through competitive bidding.
So, it could be easily concluded that the power tariff policy is governed by the Electricity Act. The main focus of Central Government behind these amendments was the promotion of renewable generation sources and creation of more competition, efficiency in operations and improvement in the quality of power supply. With regard to this policy, the Rajasthan Electricity Regulatory Commission (RERC) has announced a revised power tariff hike with an average of 9.6% in various consumer categories, which are to be made effective from September 1. This hike has sought an increase in all consumer tariffs except agriculture where the hike is 5.5%.
But, seemingly, the opposition has again found an irregular and unconventional way of targeting state Government over tariff issues. It is clear that they want to play their political card over the matter and are trying to mislead masses over the issue.
- Let’s, initially start with the statement of G K Sharma, Secretary at RERC as , “The commission agreed to the hike as proposed by the state discus as they were quite conservative in their proposal. Moreover, the last revision of power rates was on February 15. This revision comes after a year and seven months and the discoms have already suffered huge losses at this time.” This clearly depicts that it is because of the profligacy and financial mismanagement of the previous government that the discoms are suffering from huge losses despite the hike. And they will still suffer a loss of about Rs. 1.25 per unit in this year. Congress might have forgotten that this loss was Rs. 3.65 per unit in the year 2013-14 when the present government took over.
- Also, the ex-CM of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot himself proposed an annual tariff hike under the Financial Restructuring Program( FRP) 2012. He also committed that the State Discoms will send a request to RERC to increase power tariff each year. But, these specifications have changed as they don’t want the ruling party to focus on the development of masses.
- It is also to be noted that it is the authority of respective State Electricity Regulatory Commission to regulate power tariff in each country of the state, and state government has no part to play in this power tariff hike. In fact, the state government led by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has been very concerned about the issue and thus have decided to support the discoms and provide them a grant of about Rs. 15000 crores annually.
- The power tariff hike was the urgent need of the hour as the Discoms have been huge outstanding due payments of more than Rs. 13000 crore to the power generating companies.
Not just this, the dual face of Congress party in Rajasthan is easily predictable here as data says that Power tariff was hiked thrice during the tenure of the previous government with a total increase of about 56% and in the year 2012, due to the dabster working style of then CM Ashok Gehlot, the five power distributing companies (DISCOMs) suffered a debt trap of Rs. 46,000 crore accumulated losses. These are highest of power debt of any Indian state. So, as a result of the inconclusive and weak-kneed leadership of Shri Ashok Gehlot Ji, the state is till date facing such high power tariff losses. But his atrocities on the people of Rajasthan doesn’t end here:
- Ashok Gehlot took a series of bad decisions right after coming to power in 2008 and increased the power loss in the state.
- In 2011, he purchased power as high as Rs. 8 per unit.
- He didn’t show losses in the budget even if the losses amount to an average of 2.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
- With such high losses and loans, RBI refused banks to grant any more installments of the sanctioned loans.
All these points collaborated, made Rajasthan a major defaulter only to fulfill self-interest of Ashok Gehlot as he put a moratorium on the tariff for agriculture sector for five years to get votes in general elections in 2009.
Whereas, the Vasundhara Raje government towards which Congress has been targeting since ages had only raised tariff rates twice during their tenure, that too by only 26% – 16.7 % in February 2015 and about 9.6 % now. So, there is no doubt that opposition is just trying to play their trick and use the sentiments of innocent people to provoke them against CM Vasundhara Raje and her government which is completely focused on the development of the state through constructive politics.
