AIPEF Writes to PM, Seeks ‘Detailed Deliberations’ of Stakeholders on Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2021

The federation in a letter to the prime minister has stressed that the proposed bill should not be rushed to Parliament during the pandemic period and there should be detailed discussions with power sector engineers and employees, an AIPEF statement said.

The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has written to the prime Minister seeking “detailed deliberations” with various stakeholders on the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2021, before rushing it to Parliament.

The federation in a letter to the prime minister has stressed that the proposed bill should not be rushed to Parliament during the pandemic period and there should be detailed discussions with power sector engineers and employees, an AIPEF statement said.

V K Gupta, an AIPEF spokesperson, said in the statement that the Ministry of Power circulated the Draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 on February 5 only to the state secretaries of energy for comments to be sent within two weeks, which was totally inadequate.

This procedure is anomalous and defective as important stakeholders comprising power sector engineers and employees, electricity consumers have been excluded from giving their comments, it stated.

Further, even before the time completion of two weeks, video conferences were proposed to be held on February 17 to give views on amendments, it added.

Thee virtual discussions were also held with regulators. The whole exercise to rush through this bill is thus nontransparent, undemocratic and discriminatory, it said.

The federation had raised this issue at the very beginning by seeking a period of six months on account of the prevailing pandemic, it added.

Since electricity is a concurrent subject, the exercise to amend the electricity act 2003 by excluding major stakeholders is against the constitution, the AIPEF said.

Gupta said that the government is trying to rush through amendments to the Electricity Act 2003, which would cause far-reaching harm resulting from hasty decisions without adequate analysis or consideration.

The government should review the performance of the state power utilities and only after that the revised draft of the electricity amendment bill be put in the public domain for discussion, it urged.

The proposed amendments should not be “restricted” to limited stakeholders, but instead, the viewpoints of all the stakeholders are needed to be taken into account, the body urged.

Further increase of green power target of 175 GW by 2022 to 450 GW by 2030 needs to be discussed before finalizing the same to meet international obligations, it added.

It may be mentioned that power sector engineers and employees are busy these days in maintaining round-the-clock electricity to the agriculture sector and meeting peak demand of respective states, the federation said.

They should be given enough time to discuss the bill threadbare after the normalcy restored in the country after the second pandemic wave, it demanded.

The government must not repeat the mistake of trying to rush through the amendments by ignoring the objections, it stated.

Source: PTI