No free power, yet subsidy bill goes north
Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 11
Even as the Haryana government needs to exercise caution on its expenditure so as to reduce its fiscal deficit, the subsidy bill of the government has gone up by almost Rs 150 crore this year. This even as all categories of consumers, including agriculture consumers, continue to face power shortage.

It is learnt that the hike in power subsidy bill has led to a hike in the total subsidy bill of the state government. As against the power subsidy bill of Rs 2,778.43 crore for this fiscal, the Finance Minister, Capt Ajay Yadav, has earmarked Rs 2,900 crore for the coming fiscal. This, in turn, has led to the total subsidy bill of the government to go up from Rs 3,055.61 crore to Rs 3,200 crore.

The fiscal deficit in Haryana is estimated to shoot up to a whopping Rs 8,815.64 crore, an increase of Rs 258.24 crore over the current fiscal. Last year, the government had treaded cautiously and worked at bringing down the total subsidy bill of the state from Rs 3,264.67 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 3,055.61 crore for 2009-10. Though financial prudence demanded that the government try to rein in its subsidy component, not much seems to have been done on this front in the Budget 2010-11.

For the past few years, Haryana pays the highest power subsidy to the farm sector in the country - almost equivalent to Punjab, where power is provided free of cost to farmers. This in spite of the fact that Haryana, unlike Punjab, does not dole out free power to farmers, but subsidises it at 25 paisa per unit.

The Finance Minister, when asked on why the loss-making power distribution companies were getting a larger share of the subsidy pie this year, said the government had already asked the power distribution companies - the UHBVN and the DHBVN - to pull up their socks. “Both distribution companies have been told to curtail their line losses and encourage energy audit in the agriculture sector.

The segregation of agriculture feeders from rural domestic and industrial feeders, too, will have to be paced up by the companies so that their losses can be brought down,” he said.