PATIALA: Punjab has put up a strong opposition against the recent proposal by Union government to pass 2018 amendments to power tariff policy under which a single tariff regime is to be introduced across the nation. The proposed amendments will give more powers to Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) while leaving State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs) redundant. Under the new regime both the domestic and commercial consumers will be charged same amount for the electricity across the country.

State cabinet minister Brahm Mohindra said chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh had recently shot a letter to Prime Minister Narender Modi opposing the move as power sector is covered under the concurrent list and the decision making is the prerogative of the states and not the Centre. He said the CM has also written to the chief ministers across all states in the country to oppose the move following which the Prime Minister has assured that the matter would be reviewed.

The matter came up for discussion during the Annual General Body meeting of the PSEB Engineers association where Mohindra was the chief guest along with Punjab minister for animal husbandry Balbir Sidhu, who was the guest of honour.

Later, speaking to the media persons, Mohindra said it was a serious issues and the Chief Minister has taken a strong note of situation. “Under no circumstances, the centre would be allowed to take over the rights vested with the states as per the Indian constitution,” he said.

The Union ministry of power has recently proposed modifications to the tariff policy which it claimed were aimed at ‘simplification of tariff categories and rationalization of retail tariff’ on the basis of sanctioned load and consumption instead of commercial and domestic users. The new tariff policy being mooted by the union government will be applicable across the country.

Under the proposed draft amendment of 2018 Tariff Policy, the will to fix new power tariffs will rest with the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) and not with the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs). This would make all SERCs subservient to policy dictated by the CERC and the concept of independent electricity regulator will be over and replaced by a central authority, said VK Gupta, spokesman for the all India Power Engineers Federation, who was present during the annual general body meeting of the PSEB Engineers’ Association.

The proposed tariff structure will do away with the concept of different tariff for different customer categories. This intends to create five load categories for all consumers and one slab for each load category.

At present, as per the original legislation on Electricity Regulatory Commissions Act of 1998 that provides for CERC to decide tariff for central government stations and transmission and for projects with multi-state ownership, while the state electricity regulatory commissions decide the consumer tariff and generation tariff at the state level by distancing tariff from political forces.

Mohindra said similarly the central government was planning to do away with the medical council of India and instead constitute a National Medical Council in which Punjab has not been given a single representations. This again an infringement of the state’s rights and Punjab has vehemently opposed the proposal.