16 August 2011 | Merinews

AIPEF criticizes unholy nexus of corrupt politicians and corporate houses
V K Gupta

All India Power Engineers Federation in a resolution has criticised the unholy nexus between corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and corporate houses that's well set to destroy the power sector in country.

THE ALL India Power Engineers Federatoin (AIPEF) has strongly criticized the unholy nexus revolving around corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and corporate houses, which is hell bent on selling out the public sector of the country at throwaway prices to private houses.

Padamjit Singh and Shaliender Dubey Chairman and Secretary general AIPEF said that the present trend in power sector towards privatization of generation and franchising of creamy distribution areas to private parties are embedded in the root cause of corruption resulting from the nexus between politician bureaucrats and private sector parties.

The instances of franchising of creamy distribution areas have resulted in huge profit to the private franchises while the state discoms have been put to corresponding loss. In the case of Agra, high cost power was purchased by the state discom and supplied to the franchisee at much lower rate. In Maharashtra the best performing divisions of Aurangabad were handed over to the private party while in case of Nagpur the franchise have proven a failure. In Haryana a deal involving political forces and kickbacks is under consideration for handing over the industrial cities of Gurgaon and Panipat to a well known industrial house of Mumbai.

As regarding privatization of generation this is being done by way of signing MOUs by the dozen in states like Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab, etc., which are violating the tariff policy of government of India notified under Electricity Act 2003.
Setting up of private sector plant under MOU route is patently illegal and even the central government has moved to the Supreme Court to uphold the provision of tariff policy regarding competitive bidding.

The MOU route gives the private sector party a free hand to inflate capital costs and claim higher tariff that would be loaded on the electricity consumers of the state..

If a project is to be setup with a capital cost of Rs 5 CR per MW and initial kickback of Rs 20 Lac per MW would straight away inflate the capital cost by 4% which would reflect directly on the tariff.

AIPEF has seen how big industrial houses have gained subsiderable influence and control over the govt. itself. THE Govt. policies such as state energy policy are indeed manipulated and influence to suit the big industrial houses. The recent examples are the power policy of Punjab and the energy policy of U.P., which have virtually legalized corruption in the award of power project.

AIPEF has resolved that the power engineers at every level would oppose and fight corruption particularly the institutionalized and govt. patronized type of corruption.