LUCKNOW: A day after presenting the state budget, the Yogi Adityanath government has decided not to increase power tariff this year, giving lakhs of consumers in the state some reason to cheer about.
Energy minister Shrikant Sharma, who chaired a high-powered meeting at his Vidhan Sabha office, indicated his preferences to top officials, including additional chief secretary, energy, Alok Sinha, and UPPCL chairman and MD, M Devraj by asking them to focus on timely billing, collections and cutting down line losses to shore up revenue.
Political analysts said the impending three-tiered panchayat elections, scheduled to be held in the next two months, and the ‘mother of all battles’ — the UP assembly polls — due next year may have been in mind while not hiking power tariff.
However, the energy minister has been resisting an increase in power tariff for long. Sharma has often strongly said that increasing UPPCL revenue by effecting a hike in power tariff is the easy way out, besides being a burden on the honest bill-paying consumer.
“UPPCL should instead focus on timely billing and quality power supply to increase revenue,” he said.
The minister had been under tremendous pressure from within UPPCL as well as the power regulatory authority for increasing power tariff, but he made it clear to officials that there would not be any increase this year.
The minister also asked the ACS and UPPCL chairman to increase the revenue through proper billing and recovery of dues and to shed the habit of burdening the honest consumers as they were not responsible for line losses.
Later on, the energy minister exhorted UPPCL to minimize its losses by curtailing transmission and distribution losses at the earliest as the state government is committed to providing cheap and quality electricity to consumers.
In a tweet, Sharma said, “The government is committed to providing cheap electricity. The corporation is running in loss due to financial irregularities of the previous governments. UPPCL chairman should reduce line losses and increase billing and collection efficiency to reduce losses.”
However, insiders in the ruling BJP, confirmed that apart from the energy minister’s pro-consumer stand, political compulsions had played an important role in this collective decision of not increasing the power tariff this year. The minister also held a review meeting of UPPCL with top authorities.