Chandigarh, October 16
The facility of free power to operate farm tubewells stands withdrawn in Punjab. A decision to this effect was taken today by the Council of Ministers, which has accepted the Punjab State Electricity Regulatary Commission report in toto.
Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh said today that his government was committed to fulfilling all its election promises but only when the financial position improved because the previous government had left behind finances in a complete mess.
With this decision the tariff order of the commission will be implemented with effect from August 1. The tariff for agriculture power is Rs 60 per BHP per month for agriculture pumpsets (un-metered) and 57 paise per unit in respect of metered supply. The state has 8.70 lakh tubewells, 3,200 of them metered.
The commission had passed the tariff order in respect of various categories of electricity consumers on September 6, recommending an enhanced tariff in the range of 8 per cent to 11 per cent. As the government did not make up its mind on withdrawing free power to the agricultural sector to operate tubewells, the PSEB had to put the implementation of the tariff order on hold for other categories as well. This was despite the fact that the tariff order is legally binding. But political exigencies had delayed the decision, much to the consternation of the board.
With the Council of Ministers today giving the green signal to the PSEB to implement the tariff order, an additional sum of Rs 1,460 crore will accrue to the board.
Capt Amarinder Singh said the financial situation of the electricity board was the ‘’mirror image’’ of the state. The board was also unable to meet its committed expenditure and there existed a mismatch between its assets and liabilities. The state has often been to the rescue of the board whenever it ran into difficulties in making payments. The board has already been given a subsidy of Rs 200 crore, apart from letting it retain electricity duty totalling Rs 170 crore the state was not recovering even interest on Rs 553-crore loans advanced to it. There was little hope of the board recovering financially unless the tariff order was implemented. “Had we not taken this decision today, Punjab would have been celebrating a dark Diwali,’’ the Chief Minister added. The Centre has been requested to defer
the payments for the Railways, coal etc till December-end. The current level of the board’s accumulated liabilities is Rs 760 crore.
Sources said when the issue of considering the tariff order of the commission came up for discussion, several ministers raised the issue of introducing ‘’power reforms,’’ including refurbishing the image of the board by inducting technocrats to run it more professionally and effectively. The ministers said merely enhancing the tariff was not an answer. Even the working of the board required a deep study and far-reaching administrative and technical changes to bring about transparency, efficiency and cost-effectiveness in its operations, including the plugging of loopholes to check power theft/pilferage and transmission/distribution losses and right-sizing the staff strength.
The Council of Ministers also considered the latest report on crop damage caused by westerly disturbances in some districts on Saturday afternoon. Preliminary estimates were that an area of 15,000 acres to 16,000 acres had been damaged. A special girdawari has been ordered the report of which will be available by October 25. It was decided to compensate farmers for their losses as per the norms under the Calamity Relief Fund.
The Chief Minister said the Central team which recently toured Punjab in response to its memorandum seeking a drought relief of Rs 3,500 crore had told him that the damage was much higher than what had been projected. The government decided that there would be no more free canal water available for irrigation. A sum of Rs 7 crore had been given to the department concerned to desilt the canal network because of which the flow of water to the tail-end beneficiaries had been adversely affected.
