Coming down heavily on the state government for the hike in power tariff, CPM state secretariat member and former Electricity Minister A K Balan on Friday said that the government should view power as a regulatory asset.
Balan said that this option, which is currently practised in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, could have minimised the hike. He added that the government ought to have given subsidies. Terming the hike as lack of imagination and planning, Balan said that it brings an additional burden of Rs 1,676 crore on the consumers. While introducing the tariff hike, the government has failed to take its own MLAs into confidence. “If the government had opted for regulatory asset, then a burden of at least Rs 800 crore could have been avoided.
When the last LDF government came into power, the board had a debt of Rs 4,500 crore. We were able to reduce it to Rs1,500 crore and carried out developmental activities worth Rs 3,500 crore,” he said.
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