Invoking Dr. BR Ambedkar, who as the first Power Minister of India firmly opined that the power sector should remain under the control of the State and should not be entrusted to private players, All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) has urged PM Narendra Modi to withdraw the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2021 which seeks to privatise power distribution across the country.
Saying that the Bill “seeks to usurp the related powers of the states to the Centre, thus denying the federal structure of the country”, the CPI affiliated trade union said, “The subject of electricity generation, transmission and distribution is in the concurrent list in the Seventh Schedule of our Constitution…The impugned Bill is meant for whole-sale privatisation of electricity distribution…”
Asserting that private franchisees failed to carry out their responsibilities in the states of Odisha, MP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Bihar, following which these states had to take over the electricity distribution, AITUC said, “The Bill is based on the World Bank-IMF prescription of “USER PAYS”, thus doing away with subsidies and cross-subsidies, which will have an adverse impact on the farmers and low end consumers.”
It is worth recalling here that the All India Federation of Electricity Employees, representing 15 lakh employees, had repeatedly asked the Central government to drop the Bill.
The Bill was put in the public domain in April 2020.
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