Mayawati is doing a Narendra Modi on the power front. Farmers in India are wary of governments which talk of free tariffs on electricity. However, uninterrupted power supply is as important to them as the price they pay for electricity. Separating the domestic and commercial feeder systems is integral to ensuring quality of power supply and the only state that has already done this is Gujarat, thanks to its Jyotigram programme. And now, Uttar Pradesh is thinking on similar lines.
According to Navneet Sahgal, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL), ?We have already ordered the separation of feeders in western UP. And trust me, farmers have told us as long as power supply is constant, they don?t mind paying for it.?
Hard to believe? This is not the only proposal Sahgal and UP industries commissioner Anoop Mishra have tried out. At a recent meeting of power secretaries in New Delhi, Mishra revealed that the state was trying out the franchise system for distribution of power in Agra and Kanpur.
?Like most state governments, we started out by dividing the state into zones ? five in our case ? and separated generation from transmission and distribution. The latter two were clubbed together but we found that there was no change in delivery. We saw the experiment in Bhiwandi in Maharashtra, and decided to try this out in nine cities here. We started out with Agra and Kanpur, and plan to take it to Bareilly, Gorakhpur, Moradabad, Allahabad, Meerut, Aligarh and Varanasi,? says Mishra.
The first contract for distribution has gone to Torrent, which also ran the Bhiwandi distribution franchise. ?It works since the entire distribution risk is taken over and there is a minimum investment commitment,? he adds.
This assurance is not taken very well by certain quarters, which feel that bulk power is being sold cheaply to franchise holders and expensive power farmed out to consumers.
?This is what is happening in Agra, and this is one of the reasons why power sector employees in Kanpur are blocking the move,? says Shailendra Dubey, president of the All India Power Engineers Federation, which has been opposing the move. ?There is a scam in the way power is priced and we want the government to come clean on this,? he says.
The government, however, denies any such scam. ?It was a closely fought bid,? Mishra says, adding, ?Crisil has been awarded the contract for an appraisal of the scheme in the next six months.?
What is more startling is the reforms in transmission that the UPPCL is planning. ?We have divided the state into two parts ? eastern and western UP ? and plan to privatise transmission lines of up to 765 kv. Each project will cost about Rs 4,000 crore. This is the first time in India that transmission is going to be privatised, and we have already issued requests for proposal (RFP),? says Sahgal.
Leading the blitzkrieg of power reforms has of course been power-generation contracts. At the last count, contracts for over 25,000-mw power generation had been awarded or was in the works. This has set off not just criticism but also alarm bells and accusations of crony capitalism as Jaypee Group, long considered a favourite of the chief minister, bagged two major power units at Bara (3×660 mw) and Karchana (2×660 mw) in Allahabad.
?That (criticism) is all without basis. We are also in business with the Neyveli Lignite Corporation for two plants in Ghatampur and with NTPC for one plant in Meza, which are state-owned companies. We are also dealing with the Aditya Birla Group,? says Sahgal. Most power-generation projects have a gestation period of over 48 months. With elections looming large over the state in 2012, will it earn the CM some political dividend? Sahgal just raises his eyebrows. Quite clearly Mayawati doesn?t plan to go anywhere.