Debate resumes on electricity (Amendment) Bill

New Delhi, May 7 (UNI) Initiating further discussion on the Electricity Amendment Bill, 2005, Congress K S Rao, welcoming the prevision, urged the Government to ensure that the amended act should be able to reduce the power generation cost for the ultimate benefit of the consumers.

CI (M)'s P Karunakaran said his party had already raised objections in the Standing Committee on the abolition of cross subsidy on the power tariff and to some extent, they had been able to achieve their objectives.

Ramji Lal Suman (SP) said the power tariff in India was already very high and there was no effort being made through this act to reduce the tariff structure for the benefit of the consumers.

Critising the bill as being ''highly one-sided and against the interests of the consumers, he said the bill has made provisions of punishing the small consumers while making no mention of the big industrial houses who were more involved in power theft cases.

He said the Government should ensure that the power should be available at much cheaper rates.

Suresh Prabhu (SS) urged the Government to make it clear whether it was the final amendment or not to remove the confussion from the minds of the private investors, who are undecided whether to invest or not in this sector.

Prabodh Panda (BJD) said that despite many assurances and amendments, the availability of electricity will still remain dream to large chunk of people, especially those felonging to the Scheduled castes and Scheduled tribes.

S Sudhakhar Reddy (CPI) urged the Government to review the National Power policy and while doing so not treat power only as a commercial object. ''Power plays a major role in the social upliftment and that should not be overlooked, ''he said.

Vijayendra Pal Singh (BJP) stressed the need for a through review of the power policy so that the desired objective could be acheived.

He said there were several more important issues which had been left untouched. In fact the Government should have paid more attention towards those issues which concerns the consumers more, he said.

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