Congress Urges TSREC To Reverse Hiked Power Tariff

A delegation of Congress leaders comprising Kisan Congress national vice-president Kodanda Reddy, TPCC senior vice-president Mallu Rao, AICC official spokesperson Dasoju Shravan, AICC general secretary Harkara Venugopal and others on Monday submitted a representation to the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission Chairman requesting total reversal of the hiked electricity tariffs.

Stating that the people of Telangana were totally disappointed and frustrated by the unprecedented enhancement of electricity tariffs, they said even in united Andhra Pradesh this kind of exorbitant enhancement of tariffs had not taken place, especially in the lower slabs for domestic consumers.

They said that the government's "brutal" decision was a huge burden on the people.

"It is totally irresponsible and inhumane. On one hand, the government of India continuously increases petrol and diesel prices, and on the other hand the state government resorts to hiking electricity tariffs at the same time," the Congress leaders said.

"It is well known that due to Covid people have suffered very badly and lost their employments and livelihoods. An increase in electricity bills at this time further burdens them and severely affects their livelihoods. The losses of the discoms are due to the lopsided policies of the TRS government. Never in history have the discoms accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore. There also appears to be no concrete plan with the government to rescue the discoms, which has resulted in it just passing the losses on to the people. And the Electricity Regulatory Commission does not seem to have asked the government why it is not first clearing its own dues to the discoms worth Rs 13,600 crore, of which Rs 9,000 crore belong to the lift irrigation projects alone," the Congress leaders said.

They demanded that the TSREC reverse the enhanced electricity tariffs, and take stringent measures to bail out the discoms from their losses by ensuring that the government cleared all its dues to the discoms.

The Congress leaders also sought an inquiry into all the "irregular" power purchase agreements which they claimed were causing exorbitant losses to the government. They also demanded that the government conduct an all-party meeting to review the present power policy and release a white paper on the entire finances of the discoms and the future plans to sustain them.

The leaders also said that there appeared to be massive irregularities and malpractices as 90% of the contracts seemed to have been allocated to one company, and that that needed to be inquired into by the ACB.