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Telangana government to absorb burden of true-up power charges?wer charges?
In Short
Recently, TGERC allowed discoms to collect true-up charges from power consumers
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Telangana government to absorb burden of true-up power charges?
Hyderabad: The Telangana government is likely to take a decision on giving ‘some’ electricity consumers relief from the prospects of bearing true–up charges. Following the recent order of the TGERC allowing distribution companies (discoms) to collect true-up charges from November this year, the government has begun an exercise to ascertain the burden on domestic consumers.
The TGERC has granted permission to the discoms (TGSPDCL and TGNPDCL) to collect true-up charges starting from November this year.
For the unversed, true-up charges in an electricity bill are “adjustments” made by power companies to recover past financial losses or refund past surplus earnings when their estimated costs differ from actual expenses (the latter rarely happens!).
A true-up is a retroactive corrective mechanism rather than a permanent tariff revision, ostensibly designed to balance the books for a specific past period
Going by TGERC’s order, 30 paise per unit will be collected from November and 50 paise per unit from December.
The charges would be collected over a period of 29 months in the case of TGSPDCL and 26 months in the case of TGNPDCL.
The charges are being collected for the power consumed during 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 financial year.
A total of Rs 5,420 crore would be collected from all electricity consumers, including domestic, commercial, and industrial bodies.
However, in a bid to give relief to the farmers, Rs 2,215 crore true-up charges pertaining to the agriculture sector would be borne by the government.
Top officials said that the Energy Department was reviewing the TGERC order on true-up charges to determine whether the poor and middle classes would face a huge burden.
For the first time, true-up charges would be collected from the consumers after the formation of the Telangana state. During the 10-year BRS rule, no additional burden of true-up charges was imposed . Now, the TGERC has allowed the discoms to collect true-up charges to ease the utilities’ financial burden. The big challenge before the government is to rescue the power utilities by collecting the charges without mounting a financial burden on domestic consumers.
“Collecting true-up charges from the consumers is also a politically sensitive issue amid increasing political heat in the wake of upcoming polls to two graduate constituencies, by- elections to Khairatabad, and urban local body elections to GHMC, Warangal, Cyberabad, and Malkajgiri anytime in the end of this year”, a top official of the Energy Department said.
The onus is now on the government, which is likely to take an appropriate decision to absorb the burden of true-up charges, considering the political and financial issues.
“Before the start of the collection of the true-up charges in November, it is certain the government will take an important decision to give relief to ‘some’ consumers,“ the official, who did not want to be named, said.
