CHANDIGARH: Engineers of state electricity boards from all over the country have come out against the revised draft of the Electricity Amendment Bill enabling the private operators to supply electricity consumers in their areas.  The Bill is likely to be tabled in the winter session of Parliament next month.

All India Power Engineers’ Federation (AIPEF) has submitted its comments on the Bill to Union Minister of State for Power, R.K. Singh, demanding that the revised draft be sent back to the standing committee and the Federation be given a hearing to present its viewpoint. It has also urged that the states should be allowed to give their views before the committee as electricity is a concurrent subject.

Federation Chairman Shailendra Dubey while addressing the meeting of EIPEF said today that the changes in the draft Bill have been proposed to pave the way for privatization of the power sector, wherein supply licensees will be mostly from the private sector who will get assured profit by way of guaranteed return on capital employed and by stipulating that they will get their expenses covered without revenue gap. The changes proposed in the tariff policy are to encourage privatization and ensure guaranteed profits to private parties

Theoretically the Bill provides for more than one service operator to supply power to a consumer in one distribution area. This, the government hopes, will give consumers an option of changing their power supplying company or utility based on their service efficiency.

V K Gupta Spokesperson of Federation said that when most of the state distribution companies (Discoms) in the country are in financial distress, this is not the time to introduce changes by way of separating supply and distribution functions which t will make the financial crisis even worse.

The Federation has termed the changes proposed in the Bill as a matter of serious concern as this, according to it, will concentrate all powers in the electricity sector in the hands of the Centre and eventually lead to complete privatization of power distribution in India.

A seminar on ‘Electricity Amendment bill was held earlier this month at Bhopal where various speakers  rued over the fact that even after miserable failure of privatization and franchisee system  in power sector the complete  privatization is being mulled which is neither good for country nor for the consumers.