VK Saxena, Lieutenant Governor Delhi.
– Photo: social media
Expansion
Taking cognizance of the issue of power subsidy in the national capital, Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has asked the Chief Secretary to follow the statutory advice of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) and place it before the Council of Ministers to take a decision within 15 days. Telling the Chief Minister about the shortcomings found in the Trade Rules (TOBR) by the then Energy Minister, he has also urged the Chief Minister to instruct all the ministers of the Delhi Government to follow the Trade Rules honestly. Implementation of the Commission’s advice would have resulted in annual savings of up to Rs 316 crore to the exchequer, besides providing relief to 91-95 per cent consumers.
In 2020, the DERC issued a statutory advisory to the Aam Aadmi Party government asking the Delhi government to consider restricting power subsidy to economically weaker and needy consumers. With this, 95 percent of the people who consume 1-5 kW of electricity would have benefited from the subsidy. Along with this, non-essential consumers whose consumption is more, could have saved Rs 200-316 crore annually in the government exchequer.
Ignoring the advice of DERC, the power department is violating the trading rules. The power subsidy scheme was continued without the approval of the cabinet. Due to lack of financial approval for this, the burden of 316 crores increased. Earlier in 2018, DERC had asked Delhi that the government would consider transferring power subsidy directly to consumers’ accounts. Despite this, instead of DBT, the Aam Aadmi Party government continued to pay subsidy to private discoms.
Discom did not pay the dues
In this matter, the Chief Secretary has highlighted the shortcomings in his report. The report was submitted to LG VK Saxena and the Chief Minister under Rule 57 of the Business Rules. In this report of the Chief Secretary, a complaint was given for non-payment of dues by the discoms. In the report, statutory advice was given by DERC under section 86(2) of the Electricity Act, 2003. It was asked to consider limiting the subsidy to domestic consumers.
Consumers with load above 5 KW were not needy so they should not be given the benefit of subsidy. Instead of keeping the proposal related to it in the cabinet, instead of keeping the proposal related to it in the cabinet, the government exchequer was burdened with crores of rupees every year.