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Power shock for consumers in Telangana
The Telangana power utilities are ready with the Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) to be submitted to the TS Electricity Regulation Commission (TSERC) on Friday. According to highly placed sources, the ARR will exempt BPL families consuming power below 50 units per month from power tariff hike but tariff for all other categories will be hiked. (The Hans India had reported this on November 10).
Exemption only for BPL families consuming power below 50 units
Hyderabad: The Telangana power utilities are ready with the Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) to be submitted to the TS Electricity Regulation Commission (TSERC) on Friday. According to highly placed sources, the ARR will exempt BPL families consuming power below 50 units per month from power tariff hike but tariff for all other categories will be hiked. (The Hans India had reported this on November 10).
It has also been decided to include the power allotted to Telangana Discoms under the PPAs (Power Purchasing Agreements) entered with APGENCO in the undivided AP, in the ARRs. It may be mentioned here that the task force has recommended that the TS government should scrap the PPAs as it would help the state government to save Rs 275 crore. But the government seems to have decided otherwise as scrapping of PPAs at this juncture may lead to power shortage in the state.
The Telangana and AP governments had locked horns over the continuation of PPAs after the AP scrapped the agreements immediately after the division of state. The Telangana government was demanding 1422 MW of thermal power from Krishnapatnam and Hinduja thermal power plants and another 540 MW from Sileru hydel station. As per the AP Reorganisation Act, Telangana is entitled to 53.89 per cent of power and the remaining share 46.11 per cent allotted to AP.
Telangana Genco Director (Finance) S Srinivasa Rao told The Hans India that the power utilities included the power allotted to them under PPAs in the ARR and prepared the new tariff proposals based on the availability of power to the respective Discoms. Even as the Task Force Committee suggested in its recent report that scrapping the PPAs would relieve the state from financial burden, Telangana government stuck to its stand on PPAs.
The officials said the Discoms finalised the quantum of tariff hike based on the burden of free power supplied to agriculture sector and the subsidy provided to domestic and industrial sectors. In all, it is estimated that the Discoms would have to bear the burden of Rs 5000 crore in the form of power subsidies this year. Government has to reimburse the subsidy amount to the utilities every quarter in four instalments.
As the Commission already extended deadline for three times to submit the ARRs, the power utilities – TSSPDCL ( Southern Power Distribution Company Limited) and TSNPDCL (Northern Power Distribution Company Limited) have decided to file the ARRs without failure on January 9.
By:Patan Afzal Babu
