AIPEF seeks UP CM intervention against franchisee system in Agra
30-Mar-2010 By: Vinod Kumar Gupta

Lucknow: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) seeks intervention of Uttar Pardesh Chief Minister in not handing over the distribution of power in Agra to franchisee Torrent power. Shaliender Dubey in a letter to CM has drawn his attention to UP Power Corporations decision to handover Power Distribution of Agra to private franchisee M/s Torrent Power from April.

Dubey said that Electricity Act 2003 envisages franchisee system basically for rural areas. Franchisee system already prevailing in rural areas of UP has miserably failed. This has been publicly accepted by Energy Minister of UP and CMD of UPPCL. Therefore it will not be suitable to implement the same failed experiment in Agra city also.

It may be mentioned that in tender documents issued in February 2009 Average Tariff Rate of Agra was given Rs.2.82 per unit and Rs.3.55 per unit for Kanpur against which the private company quoted Rs.1.54 per unit for Agra and Rs.2.00 per unit for Kanpur.

Now it has been accepted by UPPCL that ATR given in tender documents was very low and actual ATR of Agra is Rs.4.00 per unit and that of Kanpur is Rs.4.25 per unit.

Dubey said in view of revelation of this fact now it is clear that UPPCL will be loosing Rs. 180 crore every year in Agra only by supplying 1800 million unit of power. UPPCL will loose total Rs.3600 crore in 20 years offranchisee.

It may be mentioned that power employees and engineers will proceed on indefinite work boycott from March 31 against the proposed transfer ofpower distribution in Agra to Torrent Power in the first week of April. Employees have also warned of complete strike if the proposed privatization took place or action was taken against the agitating engineers.