Its a great comedy of error that power-starved Congress has promised free or subsidized power to the people of Delhi, but its government in Punjab has hiked the power tariff 11 times since it came to power in the state three years back. Who will trust the Grand Old Party? Delhi Congress party chief Subhash Chopra has promised free electricity up to 600 units per consumer (later he clarified subsidized) if Congress is elected to power. In Delhi AAP government headed by Arvind Kejriwal has been providing 200 units of electricity free to every consumer. As a run up to assembly elections, Congress has gone step ahead of AAP.
Congress had also promised Rs 5 per unit to industry and cheap power to consumers in Punjab. But it has gone back on its electoral promises. Instead, it has burdened the consumers with hike at regular intervals power . In its latest hike domestic consumers and commercial electricity will be costlier from new year. .It will be Rs 0.30 costlier for domestic consumers and Rs 0.29 for commercial users. . The hike will also cost Rs 20/horsepower more to farmers. With latest hike the domestic consumers will have to pay Rs 8.37 per unit, the highest in the region.
State govt is already providing free power to farmers and subsidized power to Dalits and Industry. It costs more than 10,000 crore to cash-starved state. Nearly 14.5 lakh agriculture tubewells are provided free power in the state, acccording to state government’s data. It has been a bone of contention since long that big farmers, several political families of the state, income tax payees, MLAs, MPs are also given the free power undeservedly. The burden is increasing year by year. It was just Rs. 690 crore when sop of free power was extended to farmers in 1997-98. State's finance health was much better than.
What is worse is that consumers have to pay for the mismanagement and inefficiencies of the govt. Unlike other states which acquire power plants from the private sector, Punjab has allowed the private players to build three super-critical thermal plants in the past few years. As such the government passes on to the consumer the PSPCL’s bill of fixed charges paid to the private companies even for power that is not utilized. This mismanagement puts an extra burden of Rs 1,300 crore annually to the consumers. Then there are transmission and distribution losses estimated around 17 per cent in the state.
Its bad luck for people of this country that every now and then we have to pay for the misdoings of our rulers. They represent us but care too little to our plight. Congress or Akalis or BJP, all are chips of the same block. Corruption is there at peak as was there in SAD-BJP rule and so are poor financial health (almost bankruptcy).But splurging financial resources continue unabated. The latest example was the appointment of disgruntled Congress MLAs as advisers. Its very sordid state of affairs. God save this country!