Vijayawada: Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy refutes power tarif hike charge

Vijayawada: Stoutly condemning the allegations of power tariff hike in a section of the media, finance minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy said here on Friday that the power consumption had gone up abnormally since people were staying home for the last two months due to the lockdown.

Addressing the media at the media point of the Covid Command Control Room here, Rajendranath Reddy said that the erstwhile TDP government introduced static system in power billing and collected abnormal charges from people.

He said that the YSRCP government introduced dynamic billing system, in which the billing would depend upon the actual consumption of that particular month. He was confident that people would understand after seeing the power bills in the next couple of months.

He said that the discoms (distribution companies) are placing the bills of the last two years online which could be verified to compare with the latest bills.

The minister said that the people were given time to pay bills up to June 30 without any additional charges and re-connection charges.

Ruling out hiking of the tariff for the general consumer, he said that there was slight increase in the tariff for the consumers who utilise more than 500 units.

The minister said that the YSRCP government had paid Rs 15,000 crore to the discoms in the last six months reducing the arrears to Rs 5,000 crore.

He appealed to the people not to believe the false propaganda by the opposition which is making baseless allegations for political mileage.