Congress, others playing fraud on people in name of welfare measures
These loans are almost always in the Retail segment, granted to individuals, and have the potential to become NPAs in a short time in the event of default
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Congress, others are playing fraud on people in name of welfare measures and Delhi Govt’s Power scheme is an example, says Gopal Krishna Agarwal, National spokesperson of Bharatiya Janata Party.
Arvind Kejriwal's government is cheating the people of Delhi in the name of providing free electricity because the companies providing free electricity will recover about Rs 20 thousand crore from the people of Delhi in future. This amount is going to increase by about Rs 5 thousand crore every year. In future, the people of Delhi will have to pay for electricity at much higher prices for current consumption, he said in a media interaction in New Delhi.
Agarwal said that by the financial year 2021-22, the regulatory assets for electricity distribution in Delhi was Rs 18,578 crore and the annual interest amount accruing on it will be approximately Rs 1500 crore. The subsidy amount given by the Kejriwal government for electricity is being given to private distribution companies instead of transferring it directly to the public. In the year 2018, LG of Delhi had said that audit should be done through CAG but Kejriwal government has refused. Is Kejriwal government refusal to get discoms audited by CAG because of corruption?, he asked
According to Agarwal, “It is not without efforts that India is now the fastest growing economy of the world and is the fifth largest economy. PM Modi over the last 9 years has worked overtime to create an ecosystem of transparency, good governance, targeted and leakage proof delivery through use of technology, equality of opportunity, fighting nepotism in such diverse field as politics, bureaucracy and even sports.
The facility of a regulatory asset has been provided by Electricity Regulatory Commissions to limit tariff impact in a particular year and should be done only as a very rare exception in case of natural calamity or force majeure conditions.
DERC determines and regulates the private Discoms in Delhi. It says that the recovery of outstanding under recovered amounts called Regulatory Asset, along with carrying cost of these assets should be time bound and within a period not exceeding seven years. There are three Discoms in Delhi. BSES Rajdhani Power, BSES Yamuna Power Ltd and Tata Power Delhi Distribution.
In case of BSES Rajdhani Power Limited’s, responsible for distribution of electricity in Delhi, the calculation of Average Billing Rate (ABR) and Average Cost of Supply (ACoS) shows that ACoS as per BPR, 2023 is Rs 9.9 per unit whereas the ABR at current tariff is Rs 7.05 per unit. Therefore despite continuous yearly tariff determination exercises undertaken by DERC, there remains a huge unrecovered amount (Regulatory Assets). The total difference between Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR) and power purchase cost till FY 2021-22 is Rs 8191 crores. The same for BSES Yamuna Power is Rs 5362 crore and for Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited it is Rs 5021 crore. The total figure for FY 2021-22 comes to Rs 18,578 crore. If we conservatively assume the carrying cost for this amount to be 8 per cent per annum, the annual interest payable to the distribution companies would come to around Rs 1,486 crore. This interest burden will be payable by the electricity consumers of Delhi.
It must be kept in mind that the Delhi State government takes pride in the fact that electricity rates in Delhi have not been increased in the last 8 years. It is utterly dishonest of the AAP government to claim so because the Regulatory Assets of the power distribution companies have ballooned during this period and it’s the people of Delhi who will have to pay it eventually and that too with interest that is being accrued at the rate of Rs 1,500 crore annually. AAP government has allotted Rs 3,250 crore in the budget for the year 2023-24 to Discoms as subsidy for consumers. That amount will go towards providing free electricity up to 200 units per connection and 50 per cent subsidy for consumption up to 400 units. And this amount is incorporated in recovered amount. Thus the Regulatory Assets will not be affected (reduced) by this allocation.
There are other issues of Delhi government transferring subsidy amount to the Discoms instead of transferring it to the consumers (Direct Benefit Transfer). Transferring such big amounts to companies is prone to corruption, continuous refusal of AAP government to subject Discoms to audit by CAG is a concern.
Bharatiya Janata Party, under Narendra Modi ji is working relentlessly to provide fiscally prudent and responsible social welfare schemes and expose false and fraudulent promises of the opposition. We believe in empowerment and not entitlement and the difference is evident in sound current macro-economic fundamental like GDP growth, fiscal deficit, inflation, foreign exchange reserve etc, Agarwal said.
Whether it’s taking step to empower women or the subject of MSP for farmers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is concerned for all. The MSP for six rabi crops and the dearness allowance for Central Govt Employee has been hiked yesterday. We thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for these steps.
