CHANDIGARH: Northern India Power Engineers Federation (NIPEF) strongly opposes Government of India’s initiatives to    privatize the power distribution across the country.

The federal council  its meeting today and was addressed by Padamjit Singh Chief Patron and Shalindra Dubey Chairman of All India Power Engineers Federation , Y S Tomar, Sanjeev Sood, Harjit Singh  and others. The federal council unanimously elected  K D Bansal from  Haryana Chairman  Rajeev Singh  from  UP as Secretary General. The elections were conducted by V K Gupta Spokesperson AIPEF

NIPEF criticized the mandatory letter of credit (LC) policy mechanism for Discoms issued by Ministry of power to facilitate the payment of private power producers without similar benefit to state generating companies.

Shaliendra Dubey said that the mandatory system of letter of credit (LC) opening would cause an upheaval in the power sector as the they will face cash crunch even to pay the salaries to its employees in some states. In case of power supply stoppage by private generator Discoms will have to pay fixed charges and they would not be able be allowed to purchase power in open market and the consumers will be the worst sufferers.

Padamjit Singh said that this order is only to safeguard the interests of private power producers. The focus of government should be on improving efficiency, bringing down costs and improving the financial health of Discoms and not to wipe out the NTPC and state power sector. The policy of government is to help private power generators in the name of stressed power plants and has reopened the power purchase agreements for their benefits.

The federation supported the move of Andhra Pradesh Chief minister for negotioating power purchase agreements made at exorbitrent rates. When the government has altered their  terms of payments to advance payments why the state governments cannot renegotiate the power purchase agreements for the consumer benefits.

NIPEF demanded that pay scales of newly selected assistant engineers in Punjab Uttra Khand and Haryana should be brought at par with the pay scales of existing employees. 

The other elected NIPEF office bearers are Vice Chairman are Ram Prakash, Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Anil Mishra and R K Pathania , the Secretaries  are Praveen Swaroop Saxena , Harvinder Singh , Tushar Gupta , and  Jeet Singh. The executives members  are Ajay Sharma, P K Pandey, Sukhwant Singh, Mukesh Kumar, K K Malik, J P Sharma r Pirzada Hidayatullah, and Pankaj Sharma.