CHANDIGARH:All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has hailed the
the stand of Bihar Government that the power sector should
remain in the state sector and the state government is not in favor
of any kind of private participation in the energy sector.
Bihar Energy Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav has written a letter
to the Union Power Minister R K Singh on February 13
against the privatization of the power sector and advocating in favor
of the continuance of electricity in the state sector.
The letter states that the Bihar model of improving the power sector through state Discoms should be followed everywhere in the country.
The experiment of giving franchisee of power distribution in three districts of Gaya, Muzaffarpur, and Bhagalpur failed completely and even the position worsened. The franchisees did not invest a
penny in infrastructure and so they were shunted out.
He claimed that Bihar has improved tremendously on the power front
and achieved its targets before the time due to the hard work of
employees and all the parameters regarding per capita consumption
, peak demand and number of consumers have risen manifolds in
the last seven years. The transmission losses have been brought
down drastically from 60% to 29%.
V K Gupta Spokesperson AIPEF said that electricity is a concurrent subject implying that both central and state governments can make laws. Given this fact that the center is forcing the States to follow its arbitrary dictations, this is simply the systematic dilution of the roles and responsibilities of the state Governments and regulators.
Meanwhile, AIPEF Has demanded that Surinder Kumar General
Secretary Power Engineering Service Association should be
reinstated immediately.