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Patna,(BiharTimes): Never in Bihar’s history the power tariff has risen in such an absurd manner––five times in seven months and twice within a fortnight. All this notwithstanding the fact that consumers hardly get any power.
On Saturday Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) announced the imposition of fuel surcharge. This comes close on the heels of the average hike of 19 per cent in electricity tariff rate in the first week of June. |
The Board has decided to impose a fuel surcharge of Rs 1.35 per unit for two months, March and April 2011, to be paid by consumers in two instalments. The surcharge, which would affect around 23 lakh electricity consumers across the state, has been imposed on all categories of consumers except for BPL families, farmers, Kutir Jyoti. The surcharge would be realised in the bills of June and July.
According to the BSEB spokesman H R Pandey the surcharge has been imposed owing to the fact that NTPC has charged increased rate for the sale of electricity on account of costly imported coal from the Board.
Incidentally, Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC), which gave its nod to increase an average of 19 per cent in electricity tariff rate on June 1 while hearing the Board’s plea for making a hike of 65 to 100 per cent, said in its tariff order of 2011-12 that the BSEB would not impose fuel surcharge with retrospective effect. If it wants to impose such surcharge, it can implement the same for current bills and not from back date.
In December 2010, BSEB had imposed a surcharge of 69 paise per unit for nine months with retrospective effect from January 2009 to September 2009 on the same ground that NTPC had hiked the rate owing to the increase in coal prices, especially the imported variety, a key component in running thermal plant.
Besides getting Commission’s nod to increase 19 per cent in electricity tariff on current year’s petition, BSEB had also filed a tariff petition in July 2010 for the financial year 2010-11, seeking a hike of about 20 to 25 per cent in the tariff rate across the Board but BERC made a nominal increase of 5 paise per unit last December.
BSEB again in March this year imposed a fuel surcharge of 99 paise per unit for December 2010, January and February 2011, which the consumers were to pay in three equal instalments.
It remains a mystery as to why the BSEB is reminded of imposing surcharge months or in one case at least a year later.
Trade and business bodies had already criticized the repeated hike in the tariff and have also flayed the move to impose surcharge from retrospective affect. They said that this would dealt a severe blow to small and medium industries.
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