Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 16: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has urged all the State Chief Ministers and Lt Governors including Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh to seek at least three months’ time from the Central Government for the submission of comments and suggestions by all the stakeholders particularly electricity employees and consumers on the draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2021 after putting the draft in the public domain, V K Gupta a spokesperson of AIPEF said.
Shailendra Dubey chairman AIPEF has written a letter to all the Chief Ministers with a copy to the Principal Secretary power of all States and Chairman of State Discoms to take up the issue of rushing through of Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2021 in the scheduled virtual meeting of Power Minister RK Singh with all States on February 17 to discuss the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003.
At present Amendment 2021 has been circulated only to Principal Secretary States and CMDs of State Discoms and therefore lacks transparency as required under Electricity Act 2003. The most important stakeholders are consumers and power employees and engineers of State Discoms who have been completely ignored. Even the comments from statutory bodies like CEA, SERC, CERC, Forum of Regulators have not been sought.
It may be mentioned that there was strong opposition to the Electricity Bill 2020.
To avoid confusion of parallel discussion on two Bills, the earlier Bill 2020 must first be withdrawn and sufficient time must be given for discussing electricity (Amendment ) Bill 2021 as stated by the Power Minister that “The Bill will be finalized after consultation with all concerned”.
Gupta said that instead of using this opportunity to review the performance of the Electricity Act 2003, Legislative changes are being made on an ad-hoc basis to suit certain interests. Such measures may cause more damage than good. There should be sufficient debate on the Electricity (Amendment) bill 2021 both in the public domain and in Parliament.
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