CHANDIGARH:Power engineers and employees under the banner of National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers (NCCOEEE) has geared up against the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022, said, V K Gupta Spokesperson All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) on Monday.
As reported in a section of the press, the Union cabinet has reportedly approved the Electricity Bill 2022 which is likely to be passed in
ongoing session of Parliament.NCCOEEE is holding a conference in New Delhi tomorrow to deliberate on the far-reaching ‘regressive’ impact of the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022 on the power sector.
V K Gupta said that prominent MPs of all political parties had been invited to the conference and they would be urged to support
the agitation against the bill in the public interest.
The government has claimed that the main feature of proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill is to give choice to consumers
through the “multiple distribution license”. Practically this aims to help private players in looting by using
the infrastructure of state distribution companies without making any investment.
The claim of the power ministry that the Bill is based on the stakeholders’ comments and consultations is not correct as the main
stakeholders, like consumers, power sector engineers, and employees have not been consulted at all.
This will have far-reaching consequences. Without taking all the states on board, it should not be placed in Parliament. There is a need
for a ‘comprehensive white paper’ eliciting views of the states and the stakeholder before proposing amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003, and placing them in Parliament. Subsequently, the Bill should be referred to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Energy.
Gupta said that since Electricity Amendment Act 2022 has a major feature to provide consumer choice government should take cognizance of the massive failure that occurred in 2021 in UK electricity as per the report of 26th July 2022 accepted in UK Parliament
The report admits that UK Electricity consumers have taken a huge hit by way of loading the costs to be recovered from them, while at the same time allowing new supplier companies to charge and recover costs from consumers without any fault.