Telangana rejects Centre's Electricity Amendment Bill

Hyderabad: The state government on Tuesday opposed the proposed Electricity Amendment Bill by the Centre. Calling the proposed Bill as draconian, anti-people, anti-farmer and against the federal spirit of the Constitution, the state Assembly passed a resolution rejecting the Bill. Intervening in the short discussion on power, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao said that this Bill if passed will be snatching away the powers of the states. He said in a federal setup, the Centre should go in for more and more of decentralisation of powers but here it was trying to centralise all powers. He said in the past to the governments had taken away some of the powers from the states and wanted to rein them but this Bill was more dangerous than those efforts.

If it is adopted, there will be no cross-subsidies, load dispatch authority will go to New Delhi, states will have no say in constituting ERC, future of discoms will be at risk and so also scores of employees working would be at risk as private players will rule the roost. The Centre wants to give power sector on a platter to the private players, KCR said.

This new reform will be a big setback for states like Telangana. It will not be possible to give 24 hours free and uninterrupted power to farmers. Centre's Bill proposes fixation of meter for every farmer's power connection and to monitor reading. An additional Rs 700 crore burden will be there to fix meters for 26 lakh connections, he pointed out. The states will have to buy power as per their directions. If not followed they will have to pay a fine of 50 paise to Rs 2 per unit on the states.

Further, KCR said that many states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi are on the same page as Telangana. KCR said that he has already spoken to CMs of these states on how to go about on this issue and exert pressure on the Centre.