Union government’s considered the lockdown as an opportunity to privatise the power departments of the Chandigarh (UT ) by bypassing public opinion and not giving any time to stakeholders to debate the matter.

The move to privatise the Chandigarh electricity department is unnecessary as this is a profit-making utility with very low transmission and commercial losses. The central government is grossly misleading the public by saying that electricity would be cheaper after privatisation and there would be no change in service conditions of employees in the private sector.
Union Power Minister has said that personally he is not bothered about the owner of the distribution company his only worry is to reduce losses otherwise I will have no alternative except to stop the financial packages. All these conditions do not apply to the Chandigarh electricity department.

The electricity distribution system of UT Chandigarh is considered a high revenue, creamy utility with negligible agricultural and rural areas consumers. The total sale of power in UT is 1782 million units and 50 % is used by domestic consumers and balance by commercial and industrial users. The annual agricultural consumption is negligible and is 2 million units only.
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It can be seen that the T&D losses of UT Chandigarh are well below the Ministry of Power norms of 15% and these are less than 12.25%. The gap between the cost of supply and revenue is practically zero and is -0.06 %.
Given this, the proposal of the union power ministry to privatize the distribution system of UT Chandigarh is not justified at all.
UT Chandigarh does not have any dedicated earmark power generating stations, as the capital of Punjab, it gets assured power supply from 920 MW Rupnagar thermal power stations located 40 km away and from 1400MW IPP, Rajpura thermal power station which is about 50 km from Chandigarh.

It is seen that the biggest component of BBMB power at 3.5 % is priced at 17 paisa /unit as it is considered as a share of UT from Bhakra project whereas the actual share as per BBMB norms is 0.6%. The extra share of 2.9 % is given only because UT is a government organization and the common capital of Punjab and Haryana.
However, in case the UT Chandigarh electricity branch is privatized, the BBMB Power supply would be reduced from 3.5% to 0.6% since an extra share cannot be given to the private party. This would have an adverse financial impact on the tariff for common consumers.
In the case of UT Chandigarh, the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC ) performs the functions of SERC and therefore it was a statutory requirement for GOI to have referred the proposal to privatize UT power department which is a major policy decision to JERC. The opinion of the JERC should have been taken under section 86 (2) of Electricity Act 2003 under which it shall advise the state govt. reorganizing and restructuring of the electricity industry in the state.
JERC has already given its directions to UT Chandigarh for initiating action for the corporatization of the electricity department.
The worst affected will be the staff of the electricity department weather it is from UT cadre or the Punjab Haryana Discoms staff. There may not be an immediate loss but who will pay retirement and pension of the employees. DESU employees are struggling for this for more than one decade.

Further private discoms were only allowed to take a minimum of 16% profit, which would push the power tariff to almost Rs 8 per unit for consumers.
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In the case of the move to amend Electricity Act 2003, Ministry of Power had put up a proposal on its website along with the proposed amendments and statement of objects and reasons, in this case of the move to privatize UT Chandigarh, there is no notice of GOI, no statement of objects and reasons and GOI is proceeding on the basis of executive orders only.