Group of ministers clears draft Electricity Bill

Our Infrastructure Bureau

New Delhi, Aug 14: The group of ministers (GoM) on power cleared the draft Electricity Bill, 2001 at a meeting held on Tuesday. The final draft would be shortly placed before the Cabinet and is expected to be introduced during the current monsoon session of the Parliament.

Official sources said that the Bill is likely to be placed before the Cabinet on August 16 for approval.

Major recommendations approved by the GoM includes freeing of generation from licensing, providing open access to captive power plants by allowing them to sell surplus power directly to bulk consumers, redefining the role of central electricity authority (CEA) as a purely technical advisory body for assisting the central and state electricity regulatory commissions, cross subsidisation to be reduced in a phased manner, common Central tribunal to be set up for all disputes besides imposition of a nominal additional surcharge on thermal power generation to compensate for pollution.

Sources said that this surcharge would go to non-conventional sources as subsidy. Sources also clarified that although the role of CEA would be refined, it will continue to give licences for hydel projects.

Under the revised draft, new generation projects would not require technical economic clearance (TEC) from CEA and would only have to intimate the concerned state electricity regulatory Commission (SERC) and CEA in the required format about the technical specifications and cost.

Transmission and distribution (T&D) companies, however, will have to obtain a licence from the respective SERCs and transmission tariffs to be determined by the regulatory authority.

The Bill provides for formulation of a national tariff policy for power reducing cross-subsidisation in a phased manner.

Besides the Union power minister, the GoM meeting was attended by finance minister Yashwant Sinha, Planning Commission deputy chairman KC Pant, law minister Arun Jaitley and minister of state for planning and programme implementation Arun Shourie.

Sources said that central electricity regulatory commission (CERC) would look into inter-state power distribution while intra-state power distribution would be the domain of SERCs.