Political parties start blame games on power tariff hike

The Congress and YSR Congress parties claim that power tariff was not increased during late YS Rajashekar Reddy’s five years regime, but Chandrababu Naidu increases the tariff within nine of assuming power in the state. However, PCC President Raghuveera Reddy admits that power tariff was increased during Kiran Kumar Reddy’s regime.

Botsa Satyanarayana said, “Chandrababu Naidu has levied Rs.10, 000 additional burden on the people with this power tariff hike. There is surplus power and Center is also supplying additional power. Yet, his government has increased the power tariff. It is not fair to put additional burden on the people in the prevailing situation.”

It is true that power tariff was not increased during late Rajashekar Reddy’s regime. But, here two points are to be noticed. If the governments do not increase the power tariff proportionately with the rising fuel costs and maintenance for years, then the burden will accumulates during the period of time. Then the successor government will have to carry the whole burden. When it tries to transfer it back to the people, obviously they will fume upon it comparing with the previous government.

Late YSR has managed to run the show for five years without increasing the tariff and he transferred the burden on to Rosaiah government. He also runs the show for one year and transferred to his successor Kiran Kumar Reddy, who was forced to transfer that whole burden back to the people. Hence, he faced ire of the people and earned bad name for it.

Second thing is having surplus power or getting power supply from the Center doesn’t mean that the power is coming at free of cost to the state government. It has to spend thousands of crores money to obtain the power supply.

The power price solely depends on its production cost, whether it is produced in the state or obtained from the other states. So, there is no meaning in arguing there is surplus power or getting sufficient power supply from the Center. However, the governments can reduce the burden on the people if take some measures like improve efficiency in power generation plants, bringing down the production costs, reduce the transmission losses, prevent power thefts and use quality equipment etc.