The demand of Gulbarga Electricity Supply Company (GESCOM), a State-owned power supply company responsible for supplying power in six districts of Hyderabad Karnataka region, to revise its retail power tariffs to fill the gap between revenues and expenditure in 2019-20 faced severe criticism from all sections of power consumers — right from ordinary household users to industrialists.
In a consultative meeting called by Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) at the district administrative complex here on Monday, R. Ragapriya, Managing Director of GESCOM, presented the factors that had forced the company to seek power tariff revision. According to her, the company expected ₹ 5,213.76 crore revenues against the requirement of ₹ 5,830.59 crore leading to ₹ 616.83 crore deficits in the next financial year. Adding the previous year’s deficit of ₹ 351.58 crore would take the next year’s gaps to ₹ 968.41 crore. To fill the gap, she proposed an increase of power tariff by 98 paise per unit for normal consumers, ₹ 1.35 per unit for irrigation pumpset users and 85 paise per unit for HT industries. However, the stakeholders were unanimous in opposing the demand.
Deepak Gala, president, a civil society activist, narrated how GESCOM’s mismanagement and inability to recover long-pending subsidy dues from the government had turned the State-owned undertaking into a loss-making venture. “The State government owes ₹ 2,326.2 crore, including an interest amount of ₹ 1,257.69 crore on unpaid dues to GESCOM. There is no provision in the Electricity Act to exempt the government from paying dues and interest. If GESCOM recovers the amount, the need to transfer the financial burden onto consumers through power tariff hike wouldn’t arise at all,” he said.
He pointed out how the Punjab government had, upon the direction of the Electricity Regulatory Commission, paid ₹ 307.79 crore interest on the delayed payment of subsidy dues of ₹ 5,600.70 crore to Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd. and argued that a similar measure was applicable to Karnataka as well as the Electricity Act was same for all the States. Mr. Gala also questioned GESCOM’s decision to purchase 115.82 million units of power from Raichur Power Corporation Limited, a joint venture of Karnataka Power Corporation Limited and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, at an escalated price of ₹ 8.41 a unit. He demanded that the KERC direct GESCOM to purchase power from local entrepreneurs who would generate power from non-conventional sources such as solar energy and sell it at much lower prices.
GESCOM’s failure to conduct mandatory consumer interaction meetings at the sub-divisional level at least once a month too was brought to the notice of KERC. A penalty of ₹ 1 lakh on each Superintending Engineer responsible for non-compliance was demanded.
Mallanagowda Patil, a farmer, said that GESCOM officers never changed defunct electric transformers without being paid around ₹ 15,000 bribe. He also highlighted how the claims of seven-hour power supply to irrigation pumpsets in the rural areas had turned out to be a hoax. “We get only 3-4 hours of 3-phase power for pumpsets,” he said.
Siddaramayya Hiremath, an RTI activist, claimed that GESCOM’s mismanagement and negligence in utilisation of transformers had incurred a loss of ₹ 75 crore to the company. “As many as 6,000 transformers are lying unused in warehouses. The warranty period for 3,000 of them has expired. The non-utilisation of transformers has caused ₹ 75 crore loss to GESCOM. It is unfair to transfer the burden onto genuine consumers who promptly pay their electricity bills,” he said, opposing GESCOM’s request for power tariff revision.
After hearing all submissions, Shambhu Dayal Meena, Chairman of KERC, said that the regulatory body would consider the objections while taking a final decision on GESCOM’s plea.
H.D. Arun Kumar and H.M. Manjunath, members of KERC, were present.