Consumer bodies: Don’t want govt to appoint MERC members

Nagpur: Consumers organizations of the state have strongly objected to the central government’s move to appoint a committee to select members of the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) and others state ERCs. The centre proposes to amend the Electricity Act, 2003, and has invited suggestions and objections.
Maharashtra Veej Grahak Sanghatana (MVGS) and Prayas Energy Group have stated that they opposed the proposed amendment as it was an encroachment on the constitutional rights of the state governments as electricity was a subject included in the concurrent list.
MVGS stated that the union ministry of power can resolve important issues through well-coordinated efforts with state governments or through the Forum of Regulators.
The draft envisages a four-member commission instead of three. MVGS president Pratap Hogade has opposed this move and stated that the number of members should be odd and not even.
The draft bill proposes to set up an electricity contract enforcement authority. MVGS stated that it was a clear curtailment of the existing powers of SERCs, which was not necessary.
“It seems that this amendment is introduced for the purpose of uniform practice across the country. But this motive can be served by stringent conditions of implementation of the legal provisions or through the Forum of Regulators or through the central monitoring committee. Consumers or consumers’ representatives or consumers’ associations can’t approach Delhi every time and their voices, views will not be heard, which is against the spirit of the Act,” Hogade has stated in his submission.
Direct subsidy transfer to consumers’ bank accounts was a welcome move and a step forward toward transparency and to avoid the misuse of subsidy. However, considering the scattered business model of agriculture sale of electricity, with large amounts of receivables and need to collect the data of bank accounts, a reasonable moratorium period for its implementation should be given to distribution licencees.
“The proposed amendments show that open access available to the individual consumers will be withdrawn or it will be made unviable due to the heavy burden of cross subsidy surcharge, additional surcharge and all other applicable charges on these consumers. This is against the spirit of the law which says that there must be competition in the sector to bring the required efficiency,” states MVGS.
“Also, it seems that the provisions of no cross subsidy surcharge or no additional surcharge for consumers having their own captive generation plants are also being withdrawn. This will be total injustice to these consumers in the era of delicenced generation,” it added.