Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister has requested Prime Minister to withdraw the Electricity (Amendment) Bill proposed by the Union government. The Trinamool Congress leader alleged that states were not consulted properly before the initiation of the bill.
‘Power is too important a sector for such unilateral interferences, especially when ‘electricity’ as a subject is in the Concurrent List of the Constitution of India and any legislation on a subject in such a list needs serious prior consultation with the States. In the present case, there has been some tokenism of consultations, but no real exchange of views, which is antithetical to the federal structure of our polity’, said Mamata Banerjee in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘Such a laissez faire approach would result in concentration of private profit – focussed utility players in the lucrative urban-industrial segments, while poor and rural consumers would be left to be tended by public sector DISCOMS. In the name of market reforms, the State will give up its commanding height, state PSUs will become sick and ailing and yet forced to serve areas where no corporate body would focus. Allowing cherry-picking to select private entities cannot be the goal of public policies, particularly in a strategic sector like power’, she said.
The new bill aims at amending the Electricity Act 2003. The new bill sets rules and regulations for regulatory authorities in the state and central departments of the power sector. The Bill has proposed the setting up of a National Selection Committee instead of a separate selection panel for the appointment of state electricity regulatory commissions (SERCs).
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