PM body to discuss electricity, petro Bills

NEW DELHI: The draft Electricity Bill and the Bill for setting up Petroleum Regulatory Board might witness a revision.
The PM’s council on trade and industry, which was reconstituted last week, has for the first time set itself a specific agenda to discuss these two Bills.
The meeting, scheduled for the second week of June, will start off with presentations by the Ministry of Power and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas followed by discussions.
The council, a high-level commission of the Cabinet Secretariat level, meets once in three months for policy dialogue on important issues relevant to trade and industry.
However, it is the first time that a specific agenda has been set for the meeting indicating that the two Bills might be recasted.
Incidentally both the Bills have been presented in the Lok Sabha and while the Electricity Bill is currently with the standing committee, the Bill relating to Petroleum Regulatory Board is yet to be tabled to the committee.
Some of the contentious issues of the two Bills relate to the funding and administrative independence of the regulatory bodies and setting up of a time frame for implementation. This is specially important for the Electricity Bill which has to be okayed by the individual states.
The aforesaid trade and industry council has been reconstituted last week with the induction of Ashok Soota, who replaced Sanjeev Goenka as the president of Confederation of Indian Industry(CII). However, Sanjeev Goenka has been retained in the council in his personal capacity.
Industry bodies like CII have been demanding separation of funding from the government’s budget and replacing it with independent sourcing from the individual players whether it is the private sector or the PSUs for the regulatory bodies.
In addition, the provision for government control in the regulatory bodies in the draft Bill has also come under sharp criticism.
These issues are expected to be discussed in the council meeting and amendments might be of the order.