Beginning today, people in Punjab to get 300 units of free power each month

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, July 1

Beginning Friday, people across Punjab will get 300 units of free power each month. The promise was made by the Aam Aadmi Party last year, in the run-up to the elections.

The state government has reserved a sum of Rs 1,800 crore for giving the free power, in the budget proposals for this year. Though the final blueprint of the scheme will be okayed by the council of ministers, who are expected to meet soon, the scheme will be effective from Friday.

Top officials in the state government told The Tribune that a meeting of the Board of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited is to be held on Friday, where the details of the scheme would be okayed.

Punjab has 73.39 lakh domestic consumers who stand to benefit from the scheme. Over 60 lakh consumers are estimated to consume up to 300 units of power a month.

The earlier scheme announced by the previous Congress government, where all domestic consumers having a load of up to 1 kilowatt, got 200 units of free power, will be subsumed in the new scheme. The earlier scheme of giving 200 units of power for free to the SC, BC and BPL consumers will also be subsumed in the new scheme.

The total power subsidy bill of the state government this year is expected to rise to Rs 15,846 crore. The state government also has to pay a power subsidy of Rs 7,117 crore from the previous years, which was not paid by the previous Congress government. Thus, the state will be paying Rs 22,962 crore this year as subsidy. This translates to 24 per cent of the state’s total revenue receipts of Rs 95,378 crore for this year.

CM Bhagwant Mann, in a tweet, said while all other governments took full five years to keep their poll promises, his government had fulfilled its major guarantee within three months of coming to power.

On Wednesday, the CM had said that the guarantee of giving Rs 1,000 per month to all women would also be fulfilled this year.