New electricity Bill ‘will push power sector into crisis’

The Joint Front of HPSEBL Employees and Engineers has strongly opposed the Draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2025, released recently by the Ministry of Power for stakeholder feedback. The forum argues that despite two decades since the passage of the Electricity Act, 2003, India's distribution sector continues to suffer severe financial distress, an issue the new Bill fails to address.

According to the forum, the proposed amendments are more damaging than earlier versions. Instead of strengthening the power sector, they claim the Bill opens the door to extensive privatisation, commercialisation and centralised control of electricity distribution. Such a shift, they warn, threatens the financial viability of public utilities, erodes consumer rights, undermines federal principles and endangers the livelihoods of thousands of power sector employees.

A key concern is the provision allowing multiple distribution licensees to operate in the same region using a common public network in the name of “competition” and “consumer choice”. In Himachal Pradesh, the forum says this would allow private players to selectively target high-revenue industrial clusters such as Baddi, Nalagarh and Kala Amb. These zones currently contribute nearly 64% of HPSEBL's income. With private companies taking over profitable areas, HPSEBL would be left serving low-revenue rural and domestic consumers, deepening its financial crisis.

The forum also points out that HPSEBL would still be responsible for maintaining and upgrading the entire distribution network while private licensees use it without bearing full costs. This “separation of content and carriage” approach, they argue, would dismantle the existing cross-subsidy framework and inevitably drive up tariffs for rural and low-income households.