Telangana 'accepts' power reforms

Hyderabad: The Telangana Government, which had so far refused to implement the power reforms recommended by the Centre, has now taken a near 'U' turn and decided to accept the recommendations but with a rider. It will not install power meters to agricultural pumpsets.

The government, it is learnt, is set to go ahead with enforcing some reforms mainly the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDS) soon. This decision was taken based on the suggestions made by the Telangana Electricity Regulatory Commission to implement power reforms. Following this, the power utilities have prepared a detailed project report (DPR) and a five-year action plan to enforce the power reforms. Officials of the state Energy department said that the DPRs have been forwarded to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for consideration. Under the RDS, the states will have to implement proposals like installation of pre-paid power meters in domestic and commercial sectors to ascertain power consumption in advance.

Once the government approves the DPRs, the state and Union Governments and the power utilities will enter into tripartite agreement and start installing prepaid meters to all domestic power connections, the authorities said that the pre-paid meters will help the utilities to reduce the losses incurred due to factors like the gap between expenditure incurred on power supply and revenue generation and the utilities will turn into profit-making organizations.It now remains to be seen whether implementation of power reforms minus installation of meters on agricultural pumpsets would qualify the state to get additional 0.5 per cent loans over and above the FRBM limits or not.