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Journalism of Courage
CHENNAI, JANUARY 11: The Centre proposes to bring in a legislation to penalise senior officials of the State Electricity Boards (SEB), including chairmen, for failure to take action against power thefts, Union Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam said today.
Inaugurating a workshop on "Regulatory Reforms and Restructuring" organised by the Power Finance Corporation, he said a major portion of the transmission and distribution losses suffered by the SEBs could be accounted for by largescale thefts of electricity by industrial units that do not legally exist. This was being done with the connivance of various levels of electricity board officials, he added.
In Delhi, the theft was as high as 50 per cent. At evening parties, a favourite topic for discussion was how to bypass the electricity meter, he pointed out.
In Orissa, for example, the real transmission and distribution loss was estimated at around 50 per cent (most of which could be attributed to theft), though it was not accounted as such, he added.
This had to be countered by vigorous pursuit of pilferers and enforcing the existing laws on power theft ruthlessly, he said.
Kumaramangalam said various SEBs owed over Rs 20,000 crore to Central power utilities. The entire system would collpase if the SEBs do not reform and pay back the dues and also improve their finances, he added.
Several state governments were also in a precarious position to bail out the SEBs and it had become imperative for the electricity boards to reform and restructure their operations, he said.
The Minister said privatisation of power production and distribution was not the answer to all these ills. But a private power distributor would normally try to prevent theft, he pointed out.
There would be power collapses this summer, he said. The country’s investment requirement in the coming ten years would about Rs 109,000 crores.
Kumaramangalam said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is likely to address the State Power Ministers at Delhi in early March about these issues and take stock of the situation.
Talking to reporters later, he said there was no hitch in the execution of the Central sector power plants in Tamil Nadu. The 1500 MW Cheyyur power plant would be implemented in the Central sector and pollution and environmental clearance from the Centre was expected shortly.
Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister Arcot N Veerasamy, who also addressed the workshop, told reporters that the state would be power surplus in the next five to six years.
An estimated 10,000 MW of power would be ready for use in the next five to six years, although the states demand would be far less than that. The state would enter into some agreement with the Centre for sale of power to the central utilities, he added.
Apart from mega projects of the Central Government, private power projects were also on the anvil.
The Minister said Tamil Nadu was having only 16.9 per cent transmission and distribution losses, which was much below the National average.
The state government was compensating the electricity board for free power distributed to the farm sector by annual subsidies of about Rs 400 crores, he pointed out.
