The Multi Year Tariff (MYT) petition submitted by the Tripura State Electricity Corporation Limited (TSECL) to the chairman of the Tripura Electricity Regulatory Commission (TERC) is replete with shortcomings and lacunae , said CPM secretary Jitendra Choudhury.
“ While there was detailed structured tariff proposal but only summarily/gross type tariff hike proposals, it is also unscientific and not ethically correct’, he said in a press conference on Monday in the CPM party office at Melarmath. He had already written a letter to the Chairman of the TERC in the first week of this month in this regard.
“There was no proper justification for the TSECL’s proposed MYT petition as far as tariff hike is concerned. Besides the MYT petition is filled with huge gaps when it comes to relevant data.”
The petition which sought an average hike on present tariff at the rate of 10 percent , 20 percent and 30 percent to cover regulatory gap in 18 years, 10 years and 7.5 years respectively was incomplete and it did no way justify power tariff hike, felt the CPM leader.
He pointed out that though since 2020, the TSECL gave away Kailasahar, Manu, Ambassa, Mohanpur and Sabroom divisions to the private partners or as the franchise, the MYT petition, failed to mention the revenue earning vis-à-vis revenue gap from this franchise business. Such silence is unacceptable and raises questions on sanctity of the intention of the MYT petition.”
“It is surprising that MYT petition is silent about franchise business descending performance as well as revenue realization from the franchise area against claim of TSECL on actual sale of energy at the metering point,” he told reporters.
He said, “Moreover, as five divisions were handed over with the franchise, this must have lowered down the expenditure of the TSECL in regard to the operational maintenance. This also justifies no tariff hike now.”
Choudhury also asked for TSECL authority’s intervention for increasing the power production from the state’s own generation units like Rukhia, Monarchak and OTPC to reduce the power purchase cost.
On erratic consumer bill payments he maitianed that it was due to the incompetent handling of the affairs that consumers were not submitting their bills regularly – forcing the TSECL to incur loss. He advised that the TSECLtake appropriate measures for 100% billing and timely realization of revenue, which would increase revenue earning.
