PROPOSED AMENDMENT IN ELECTY ACT TO SEGREGATE CARRIAGE & CONTENT IN DISTRIBUTION WILL BE OPPOSED : OVER DEPENDENCE ON PRIVATE SECTOR NOT IN NATIONAL INTEREST : MASSIVE DEMONSTRATION ON PARLIAMENT IN WINTER SESSION :
Indore. All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) an apex body of power engineers of country has demanded review of faulty energy policies of UPA Govt. AIPEF has urged for constituting of High powered committee headed by Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to review the energy policy & AIPEF representatives along with power experts should be given due representation in the committee. AIPEF has opposed the proposed amendment in Electricity Act '03 to segregate content & carriage in distribution and has blamed the policy of overdependence on private sector for present power crisis of country. To draw the attention of NDA govt. on need of review of power policy power engineers alongwith power employees have decided to hold massive demonstration in front of Parliament in December during winter session.
AIPEF Chairman Shailendra Dubey, Secretary General P Rathnakar Rao, Chief Patron Padmjit Singh, Venkatasiva Reddy, Sunil Jagtap, R S Dahiya, M P Vidyut Mandal Abhiyanta Sangh President Anand Tiwari, General Secretary VKS Parihar, Sr. Leader Pavan Jain and other power engineer office bearers said that experiment of unbundling of SEB's, privatisation and franchisee has miserably failed. AIPEF Federal Executive meeting was held today in Indore in which delegates from all states participated namely Apparaswamy, B L Yadav, Subhash Rathod, R K Singh, Sudhakar Rao, Bhupinder Singh, Prashant Chaturvedi, Sankar Narainan, V S Bidari, Surendra Tiwari, Rameshwar Mahure, B Y Somwanshi, Satya Pal, Y P Sharma, A K Jain, Baldev Singh, V K Gupta. SEB's were unbundled in the name of huge losses & it was said that SEB's have become commercially unvialble. Now after unbundling losses of DISCOMS have gone up to Rs. 2,50,000 cr. which proves the failure of experiment itself. Electricity tariff has gone to sky level and scams like KG D-6 scam, coal block allocation scam, UMPP scam, Delhi DISCOMS scam etc are being revealed day by day. Privatisation is going on but neither huge, pvt investment nor exemplary growth in generation capacity has been achieved. Due to failure of supplying adequate coal & gas, power plants of more than 30000 MW capacity are lying idle & country is reeling under acute power crisis, despite country having abundance in coal.
Power Engineer leaders told that the very purpose of unbundling was to reduce the losses, and improve the financial health of power sector and reduce the subsidy burden of Govt. but due to faulty policies the contrary has happened. Therefore a high power committee of experts headed by Prime Minister be constituted with representatives of AIPEF to recommend corrective measures to make India's Power sector vibrant so that goal of "Power to all at affordable rates" may be achieved in time frame.
AIPEF has demanded that proposed amendment in Electricity Act' 03 to introduce multiple supply licencees to segregate carriage and content in distribution of power should be withdrawn as it in not in national interest, it will facilitate total privatisation of power supply which will lead to unaffordable tariff for common man. Opposing the blatant privatisation they said that in backdrop of raging energy crisis is due to overdependence on private sector which did not augur well and there was a need for balanced approach by having 70 to 80% of generation with central and State Govt utilities vis-a-vis private companies for better control on grid operation as well as power tariffs would remain low. Releasing a chart they told that in M P, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Odisha, UP, Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu & Gujrat percentage of state owned generation capacity is below 50% of total capacity and in TN, Chhattisgarh and Gujrat private sector capacity is more than state sector which is not in larger interest of common consumer.
Lashing out on dirty secret of Delhi privatisation AIPEF Leaders demanded immediate compliance of CAG audit of private DISCOMS. They said that several legitimate questions arise and demand answers. At whose behest and why Delhi Vidyut board was directly privatised while other SEB's were only unbundled, on what criterion three companies (two owned by Reliance) were selected and given monopoly to distribute power & corner galloping profits to private companies and who made the Govt to surrender. Similarly urban distribution franchisee has failed. Private franchisee is earning huge profits and Govt. DISCOMS loosing heavily by way of purchasing power at high rates and supplying it to franchisee at very low rate. Same thing is happening in Agra, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Bhiwandi and other places. It is nothing but privatising the profits which will make Govt. DISCOMS financially bankrupt. CAG has raised serious objections on Agra franchisee.
Power Engineers demanded for professionlisation of managment with Power Secretary and CMD of power utilities as experience power engineers. They said that power sector problems can be better controlled and losses can be reduced within the framework of public sector functioning with a professionally qualified & technically oriented management to guide the policy and execution. They also demanded to scrap new pension policy and reinstate old pension scheme for secured future of power employees.
AIPEF demanded that due to faulty energy policies continued since UPA's Govt. privatisation, franchisee, outsourcing and further segregation be stopped immediately till the review of UPA energy policy is done by the new Govt.

Hastakshep