Friday, August 26 2005 17:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: With public protests against power tariff hike growing stronger, a Parliamentary committee has favoured a probe into the decision of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to increase the electricity rates.

"It is learnt DERC has sanctioned tariff hike to BSES and Tatas without Tatas (NDPL) asking for the same, as they were able to manage at the same rates. "This is indeed surprising, as consumers under Tatas are sufferers for no reason Government must intervene and restrain power of DERC and investigate the same in Delhi and SERCs elsewhere," the panel headed by Gurudas Kamat said.

Taking a serious note of the "fast running" meters installed by private discoms in the city, besides failure to reduce transmission and distribution losses besides steep tariff hike, the panel said: "If similar trends continue in future and private discoms are not able to produce the desired results after using cheap APDRP funds, the government should seriously consider to exclude them from providing financial assistance under APDRP."

The committee said that since the government gave funds under APDRP, it is their duty to ensure that these were "properly" utilised and benefits reached the consumers. Coming down heavily on the issue of tariff hike, the Committee observed with serious concern that the recent rise in rates had "brought the public on the roads."

"The Committee is surprised to note that these private discoms have neither shown any tangible results even after using cheaper government funds under APDRP, nor have they passed any benefits to consumers", the Standing Committee on Energy said in the report tabled in Parliament.

The Committee also took a grim view on the issue of replacement of meters in Delhi saying "discoms have replaced the earlier consumer meters with fast running meters and are regularly hiking the tariffs thus increasing the woes of the consumers.

The position regarding availability, quality and reliability of power to consumers has also not shown any improvement, it said. "Still more alarming is the fact that the financial losses of utilities in Delhi have increased from Rs 733 crore in 2002-03 to Rs 1,774 crore in 2003-04," the report added.

BSES and NDPL have already used APDRP fund of 105.51 crore to strengthen their power distribution system out of Rs 473.23 crore of APDRP cost. "But the results are not at all impressive," the Committee noted.