CHANDIGARH: Citing the free power given by the Delhi government to service personnel posted there, the Indian Army has approached the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab and requested that 300 units of free power per month be given to its personnel posted in the state. This has left the cash-strapped government in a Catch-22 situation as it already has to pay a Rs 9,076 crore power subsidy bill to the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL).
Sources said the South Western Command of the Indian Army has written a letter to the state government saying that though the latter has been giving 300 units of free power to domestic consumers since July 2022, this has not been extended to service personnel and defence civilians residing in accommodations for married people in cantonments and military stations in Punjab.
While the demand has been made only by the South Western Command, which has its formations located in Bathinda and a few other places in Malwa region of the state, if the state government extends this free power facility to army personnel, it will have to do so for army cantonments and formations at Jalandhar, Ferozepur, Patiala, Amritsar and Pathankot too.
It is learnt that over one lakh troops are presently stationed across the state. All officers and junior commissioned officers (JCO) are authorised for family accommodation as are 35 per cent of jawans. In addition, a large number of civilian employees of the Defence Ministry posted at these places are also entitled for accommodation.
A senior officer on condition of anonymity said the request by the army is now being discussed at the top level in the state government as it has put them in a fix. "Free power subsidy cannot be given to the residents in cantonments and military stations as these stations get bulk power supply. The subsidy is given to individual domestic consumers," he argued.
He further said that the bulk supply is given to BSF, Indian Railways, CPWD and other central government entities besides big industry. "If any policy decision has to be taken, it will taken at the top level and will be for all bulk consumers," he said.
The free electricity scheme of 300 units has led to a surge in domestic connections, raising consumption and projected subsidy costs, thus risking PSPCL's financial stability. The number of domestic electricity connections has increased by 80,000 after this scheme was launched in 2022. Before the launch of this scheme, the corporation had approved 5.5 lakh new domestic electricity connections between 2020 and 2022 but the number rose to 6.27 lakh between 2022 and 2024.
The average annual rise in new connections used to be around 2.2 lakh, but the introduction of the free electricity scheme saw 3.65 lakh new connections in 2022-23, followed by 2.63 lakh in 2023-24. It is estimated that nearly one lakh of these new connections are “split connections” apparently created to take advantage of the 300-unit subsidy, said sources.
When this scheme was launched, 63 lakh out of 74.6 lakh consumers were using less than 300 units of electricity per month. The number of domestic consumers with zero bills has since surged, climbing from 67.53 per cent in August 2022 to 89 per cent by the end of the 2022-23 financial year. The PSPCL data shows that domestic power usage reached 17,510 million units in 2022-23.
The state government is hard pressed to pay the power subsidy to PSPCL due to its own poor fiscal health. Till November 13, the government could only pay Rs 4,508.2 crore to PSPCL out of the total subsidy due to be paid by it for free domestic power. Of the total subsidy bill of Rs 20,477 crore, Rs 11,401.26 crore has been paid. In this month, besides the subsidy of Rs 200 crore paid to the corporation, the state government has given them a grant-in-aid of Rs 2,387 crore.
It is estimated that the total domestic power subsidy bill of the state government is already expected to be Rs 8,785 crore, an increase of Rs 1,550 crore over the last financial year.