CHANDIGARH: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) is holding Federal Council meeting on August 18 to chart out the future course of their resistance against the amendment Bill and discuss the power sector reforms.

 Power sector engineers across India have been opposing the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2014 , which seeks to extend privatisation to the distribution of electricity from the day one.

Reforms in the power sector ,Integration of all power utilities in state, forced thermal backing down of state owned power plants and failure of franchisee system in power distribution are the main items for discussion on the agenda.

The government has planned to push the Bill in the winter session of Parliament which is meant clearly for the profit of private companies, on the false premise that competition will lead to better services for consumers. But the fact is that privitisation of power sector is bound to lead to the supply of electricity becoming more expensive in a country where nearly 30 crore people are still without electricity.

V K Gupta a spokesperson on AIPEF said that the Federation has demanded discussion on proposed changes in the Electricity (amendment) bill before putting it in Parliament for discussion but government has not yet responded to their suggestion. it may be mentioned that Former Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal had assured the delegation of engineers and employees that discussion will be done on draft bill and had agreed to many suggestions on the bill.

R K Singh, Union Minister of State (IC) Power and New & Renewable Energy in June that the draft Electricity Bill incorporating many changes will be circulated amongst various states for comments but as per available information the amended draft bill has not yet been circulated for discussion.