Power, bus charges to go up

​Hyderabad: The State government has decided to increase the domestic and industrial power tariff in Telangana and also hinted at an incremental rise in the ‘Palle Velugu’ RTC bus fares. A decision to this effect is likely to be taken by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Thursday.

In terms of electricity consumers, those using 100 units per month are likely to be spared from the hike as 60 of the 80 lakh connections in the State consume less than 100 units per month. The hike for industries would be less than 7 per cent.

Similarly, passengers travelling in ‘Palle Velugu’ buses would also be paying an additional Re 1 in buses travelling 30 km and Rs 2 beyond 30 km. Until now, ‘Palle Velugu’ buses were spared from price hike by the management.

The Chief Minister who reviewed the functioning of departments like Transport and Power and Singareni Collieries on Wednesday wanted people to bear the burden. “Since the government’s responsibility is to provide low-cost services of electricity and transportation to people in rural and urban areas, we can increase the charges to some extent,” Chandrashekar Rao said.

He said power utilities had borrowed Rs 2,144 crore and spent Rs 2,700 crore during the last financial year for offering quality power supply. Despite losses, the government increased salaries to the staff and prompted the power utilities to supply uninterrupted power to industries,

nine-hour power to agriculture sector also spent Rs 2,400 crore to set up new sub-stations, transformers, new lines and related works. Alleging that the previous governments were responsible for collapsing the departments of Electricity and RTC, Chandrashekar Rao said efforts would be made to protect them.