DERC sets April 17 deadline for power tariff suggestions

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission ( DERC) has extended the last date of submitting objections or suggestions for the tariff petitions submitted by the three city discoms till April 17. The earlier deadline was April 7 but the commission said they had received many requests from various stakeholders to extend the date, so the deadline was extended.

After this, the commission will hold a public hearing on the tariff petitions in which main consumers, activists, and RWA members will be able to express their views on tariffs. Already , 15 AAP MLAs have submitted written objections to the electricity tariff revision petitions for 2015-16.

The MLAs have strongly objected to any tariff hike as demanded by discoms and have provided reasons on why the discoms' petitions should not be entertained by the DERC at all. These MLAs have also submitted their names to the commission for being given a chance for personal presence during the public hearings on the discoms' petitions. The MLAs have also provided paragraph-wise rebuttals to the points raised by discoms in their petitions. Some of the objections raised include discrepancies in the power procurement prices cited by discoms, attempts to hide non-tariff income by the discoms, unrealistic projections to garner tax payers' money through short-term power purchase arrangements to fool people, faulty methods used in reading the meters of the consumers and net metering. The MLAs who have sent separate letters to the DERC are: Anil Bajpai (Gandhinagar), Adarsh Shastri (Dwarka), Pawan Kumar Sharma (Adarsh Nagar), Bhawna Gaur (Palam), Rajesh Rishi (Janakpuri), S K Bagga (Krishna Nagar), Amanatullah Khan (Okhla), Fateh Singh (Gokalpur), Naresh Yadav (Mehrauli) Jarnail Singh (Tilak Nagar), Avtar Singh (Kalkaji), S S Dalal (Mundka), Gulab Singh (Matiala), Akhilesh Pati Tripathi (Model Town) and Ritu Raj (Kirari).