The central government is going to make a big change in the power sector. The draft of the new electricity bill has been finalised. It will be introduced in the Winter Session of Parliament starting November 29.
This will directly affect crores of electricity customers of the country. The first major change in this is that the government will no longer give subsidy to the power companies, but will transfer it to the accounts of the customers, as LPG subsidy is given.
On the other hand, the power companies will charge the full bill from the customers, that is, the customers will get the electricity at full cost. Then according to the slab, the government will transfer the subsidy to the accounts of the customers. The biggest impact of this will be that the days of free electricity will end, because no government will be able to provide free electricity. However, it can subsidize customers.
It may also happen that the government will continue to subsidize only the needy, as is happening in the case of LPG. Whereas, at present, all electricity customers get the benefit of subsidy according to the slab across the country.
Electricity will continue to be expensive
With the new law, electricity companies will be allowed to charge bills from consumers on the basis of input cost. At present, the cost of power generation companies is Rs 0.47 per unit more than the bill charged from the customers. Companies compensate for this through subsidies.
So far it is a system that the state governments give advance subsidy to the distributor power companies. Electricity rates are decided on the basis of this subsidy.
There are also some challenges in implementing the new law.
The connection is in the name of the landlord, land, shop owner. It is not clear who will get the subsidy in case of tenant.
The subsidy will be fixed according to the consumption of electricity. Hence 100% metering is necessary. In many states electricity is being provided without meter. There are 15 lakh agricultural consumers in Maharashtra who are getting electricity without meter. These constitute 37% of the total agricultural consumers.
If there is a delay in subsidy transfer, the consumer will be upset. According to ‘PRS Legislative Research’, the average monthly bill of an agricultural consumer is Rs. 5 thousand. can be up to For those who are getting free electricity now, this amount will be very heavy.
The government has to bring a new law because
The power distribution companies say that they are running in huge losses. His loss has crossed 50 thousand crore rupees.
Discoms owe 95 thousand crores to companies. There are delays in getting subsidies to discoms, due to which distribution companies are in trouble.
