Electricity Act-2003: Union Minister urged to amend proposed draft

Tribune News Service

Patiala, September 25

A meeting of the Federal Council of Northern India Power Engineers’ Federation (NIPEF) was held here yesterday.

The NIPEF called upon the Punjab Government to immediately fulfil the assurance given by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to the PSEB Engineers’ Association to set right discriminatory differential treatment by Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) by not granting rightful start pay of Rs 18,030 to new assistant engineers while allowing the same to other categories of employees of the PSPCL.

The federation welcomed the move of the Haryana Government to merge the two discoms in the state. This clearly indicates that the contention of power engineers that unbundling of state electricity boards is not in the interest of the power sector has proven to be right.

Posting of IPS officer as chairman/MD of Haryana Discoms was discussed. The NIPEF demanded that chairman/MD/directors of power utilities across the country should be serving power professionals with fixed tenure and no extension of any kind be given after superannuation. The federation is of firm view that this is essentially required for efficient/healthy working of the power sector.

AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey said after Gujarat, Punjab had become the second state to completely shut down its own thermal plants from October 2016 to March 2017 to pave way for power purchase from private sector thermal plants set up in the state.

The meeting concluded that proposed introduction of franchise system in the power distribution in the name of competition is to help private sector at the cost of state sector.

It was decided to oppose the proposed amendment in the Electricity Act-2003 in the present form. The NIPEF appealed to Union Power Minister Piyush Goel to amend the proposed draft as discussed and deliberated upon with the AIPEF and circulate the amended draft to be further discussed before introducing it in Parliament. In case the agreed amendments are not incorporated, it would lead to countrywide protests including one-day strike. The federation will abide by any directive given by the AIPEF in this regard.

The federation condemned the amendment in qualification proposed for the post of CMD of Uttaranchal Power Utility by which simple graduates could apply and appealed to Uttaranchal government to amend the qualification to allow only qualified and experienced power professionals to be eligible.

The federation alleged that the government had gone out of way in favour of Reliance Power as it had allowed raising loan against leased coal mine. The AIPEF has already moved to the Supreme Court against the SASAN power project, where Rs 1,000 crore undue benefits were passed to Reliance Power by the APTEL after overruling CERC decision regarding date of commercial run of unit 3.

The NIPEF demanded that since Union Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goel is claiming surplus coal in the country, so under such circumstances import of coal should be stopped immediately to avoid foreign exchange drain. It contested the GOI claim of surplus power.

“Why 8 crore households with 30 crore population of the country in rural areas are without electricity when country has 3 lakh MW generation capacity with maximum peak demand of 1.65 lakh MW only,” questioned Shailendra.

Delegates from Punjab, UP, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan participated in the meeting.