Chandigarh, January 14
While pressure is building up on the Punjab government to pay power subsidy dues to the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB), the union government wants to know the criteria adopted to pay subsidy in lieu of free power to the farm sector and poor sections of the society in the state.

Moreover, the issue of roll back of power tariff, hiked by the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission a few weeks ago, is still hanging fire.

Sources said today the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission in a fresh missive to the state government has asked it to inform about the schedule being followed by it to pay the subsidy to the PSEB. The commission had earlier too written to the state government in this regard.

The state government is supposed to pay the subsidy in advance to provide free power to any sector or section of the society. In the absence or default or failure to pay the subsidy, the commission can order the PSEB to charge the bill from those sections of the society which were to get free power in view of the commitment made by the state government to pay subsidy in lieu of the supply of free power.

The cash-starved state government has been dilly-dallying on clearing subsidy dues to the PSEB for providing free power to the farm sector and poor sections of the society right from the word go. The sources said there were pending dues of more than Rs 1,200 crore which were to be paid by the state government to the PSEB. The subsidy dues are to be cleared by the state government by March 31.

As far as rollback of tariff is concerned, the issue is likely to go once again to the Cabinet. For rolling back the tariff, the state government is to pay the subsidy of Rs 292 crore to the PSEB and the commission is to be informed accordingly to direct the PSEB to rollback the tariff. However, source said, the state finance department had told the authorities concerned that it had no surplus money to pay the subsidy to roll back the tariff. The authorities concerned had been advised to take up the issue to the Cabinet once again to sort out the matter.

On the insistence of the BJP, a coalition partner of the SAD in the state government, the roll back of tariff was approved by the state government.

Meanwhile, the sources said the additional power secretary of the Union Government had sought details of the subsidy on power being provided by the Punjab government.

The state government is expected to depute some senior officer to visit Delhi to inform him with regard to the pattern and criteria adopted by it.

After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that subsidies were not reaching the actually targeted beneficiaries, the union government had started an exercise at the national and states level to gather details with regard to the pattern adopted by various states to pay subsidies to various sections of society.