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Ministry of Power rushing through with amendment to Electricity Act 2003, , Feb 17,2021

Posted On : March 04, 2021

The Ministry of Power issued an Office Memorandum  on 05 Feb 2021 , circulating the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2021 to a limited group of State and UT Power Secretaries , with comments to be sent in two weeks. As  per this OM the comments could be sent by 19 Feb . The draft bill was not put on the website of Power Ministry.

 Even before the two weeks period, on 10 Feb the Ministry issued a notice for conducting a videoconference on 17 Feb.  Thereby the States / UTs were expected to give their response to the Power Minister even ahead of the given date of 19 Feb.

 The time schedule of response in VC proceedings was extremely limited with each region  being given just one hour slot  . The summary of allotted time slots is as under 

Region 

No. of States/UTs

Time Given for VC

North

10

1 Hour

West

7

1 hour

South

7

1 hour

East, North East

12

1 hour

 2.   The procedure adopted by the Power Ministry is not acceptable and AIPEF again registers it’s  protest as under on following points.

i)    Amendments be put on the website.

ii)    All stakeholders including employees / engineers & consumers are given a chance  to submit objections.

iii)   Minimum six months be given for sending comments.

iv)    Earlier Bill 2020  be withdrawn.

v)     Ministry to ensure extensive interaction with all stakeholders as assured in the meeting of 03 July 2020.

vi)     No step be taken to restructure or privatise any distribution entity in any State/ UT as Bill is pending . Action on bids in case of UT Chandigarh and others be stayed.

vii)   Draft standard bidding guidelines be  withdrawn.

viii)    OM of Ministry dated 05 Feb  be amended with extended date of response and circulated to all stakeholders.

Thanks with regards.

 

Sincerely Yours

 

Shailendra Dubey

Chairman

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The draft proposal is of serious nature for which the present situation of a pandemic is a serious constraint, it stated. The Ministry of Power has once again found peak pandemic time as an opportunity in crisis to launch the draft amendments to National Electricity Policy, it lamented. Once the draft policy is finalised, the notified policy would have the status of “subordinate legislation”, and for this reason, the matters need to deliberate as in the case of the legislation itself or as in the case of amendment in the Act itself, it opined. Draft national electricity policy is pushing for more private participation in the power sector and launching sell out of public assets as at Chandigarh and Dadra Nagar Haveli, it noted. The preferred route being suggested are failed models like the franchisee system, transferring distribution responsibility to a private party, and separation of carriage (lines) and content (supply) business, it opined. 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The body alleged that this is a clear attempt to introduce privatization through the backdoor and deserves to be scrapped. The purpose of the central government is not to review or revise the existing National Electricity Policy but the total replacement of existing policy with a new policy to be recommended by the expert group so as to achieve privatization, the body alleged. As per Electricity Act 2003, National Electricity Policy is to be prepared in consultation with the state governments and Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a statutory body. However, the body said that the CEA is not included in the proposed schedule of discussion. Further, only 5 states have been included in an expert group instead of all the states, it added. K Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser, has stated that India is the only country that readily implemented a slew of reforms and used this crisis to herald a change in India''s economic thinking, it said. 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The preferred route being suggested are failed models like the franchisee system, transferring distribution responsibility to a private party, and separation of carriage (lines) and content (supply) business, it opined. Since the existing Policy is in force since February 2005 there was no emergency to totally replace it, while power engineers and workers as front line workers are already stressed in maintaining power continuity, it added
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