BHUBANESWAR: Stakeholders and consumer activists on Monday urged the Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) to reduce the electricity tariff which was increased arbitrarily during the Covid pandemic.
Senior BJD leader and Khandapara MLA Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, in his submission before the commission, during the public hearing of Tata Power Central Odisha Distribution Limited (TPCODL) said the tariff recovery by the distribution company (discom) is more than the approved tariff.
OERC had approved an average tariff recovery of 491.66 paise/unit and 528.91 paise/unit for 2020-21 and 2021 -22 respectively whereas the discoms have recovered 521.72 paise/unit during the financial year 2020-21 and estimates to recover 572.09 paise/unit during current the fiscal. He said the discoms cannot recover tariff more than the approved rate by OERC which is determining the average tariff for different categories of consumers through cross-subsidy.
Stating that the discoms are collecting more than the approved tariff in an illegal manner from consumers, he requested the commission to examine the tariff recovery and reconcile it with average tariff recovery rate. Maintaining that the assets created out of the investment via capital subsidy of around Rs 20,000 crore disbursed by Union and the State governments during last decade under various flagship programmes are not being capitalised in the balance sheets of the discoms, the BJD lawmaker said the benefit of the investment has not reached the consumers.
Expressing concern over repeated exploitation of consumers through tariff shocks, Patnaik said the consumers are paying 126.08 paise/unit for the loss incurred by discoms against the approved loss of 104.39 paise/unit for 2020-21. In the current fiscal, the consumers will bear the burden of more losses as the approved loss is 112.34 paise/unit. This shows that the OERC is least bothered about the consumers’ interests. The distribution licensees have not been able to reduce the AT&C loss and improve the quality of power supply despite huge investments by the government. “There is no need for the State government to provide further capital subsidy but the need of the hour is to shift to revenue subsidy as done by other states,” he said.
Bibhu Swain of the Utkal Chamber of Commerce urged the commission to reduce the rate of tariff for the MSME sectors which is Rs 6.20 per unit. In its application, TPCODL has proposed a net revenue requirement of Rs 4410.16 crore with a projected loss 22 percent for 2022-23 against the current loss of 25.9 percent.