CITU national president reiterates Opposition against smart meter
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: CITU national president Elamaram Kareem, MP, has said the Union government is trying to dismantle, destroy and sell out the public electricity sector to its close corporate partners.
Speaking to reporters at BTR Bhavan after the two-day-long national working committee meeting of the Electricity Employees’ Federation of India (EEFI), Kareem reiterated that the smart meter project under the TOTEX (total cost of expenditure combining capital expenditure and operational expenditure) model will not be implemented in the state.
The meeting expressed deep concerns over the lawlessness prevailing in Manipur and the negligence of the Central government to bring peace to the area. Kareem, who is also the EEFI president, informed that through Revamped Distribution Sector Schemes (RDSS), the Centre is imposing smart meters on consumers through the TOTEX model to provide a market worth lakhs of crores rupees to corporates like Adani.
“By implementing the smart meter project, the Centre is facilitating the entry of private companies into the state utilities’ network through parallel licensing. This will do away with all cross-subsidies for agricultural and poor consumers as well. Incidentally, the Centre is trying to forcefully enforce the scheme on state governments through blackmail and threat of withdrawal of all existing Central assistance schemes,” said Kareem.
He also cast aspersions on the Centre for forcing Kerala to set up 37 lakh smart meters when bigger states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra had implemented only a very few.