AIPEF criticises nexus of politicians,

bureaucrats and corporate houses

yogindra mohan /daily Post

Patiala

The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has strongly criticised the unholy nexus of corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and corporate houses, which is bent upon selling out the public sector of the country at throwaway prices to private houses.

Padamjit Singh, Chairman of the AIPEF, said here on Tuesday that the present trend towards privatisation of generation and franchising of creamy distribution areas to private parties in power sector, are embedded as the root cause of corruption, resulting from the nexus between politician bureaucrats and private sector parties.

He said the instances of franchising of creamy distribution areas has resulted in huge profit to the private parties, while the state discoms have been put to

corresponding losses. 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 has proven to be 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 privatisation of power generation, this is being done by way of signing memorandums of undertstanding (MOUs) by dozens in states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and others, which are violating the tariff policy of the Union government notified under Electricity Act, 2003.

Setting up of private sector plant under the MOU route is patently illegal and even the central government has moved 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 tariffs 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 crore per mega watt (MW), an initial kickback of Rs 20 lakh per MW would straightaway inflate the capital cost by four per cent, which would reflect directly on the tariff.

The AIPEF has witnesses how big industrial houses have gained considerable influence and control over the government. The government policies such as state energy policy, are indeed manipulated and influenced to suit the big industrial houses. The recent examples are the power policy of Punjab and the energy policy of Uttar P.radesh, which have virtually legalised corruption in the award of power project.

The AIPEF has resolved that the power engineers at every level would oppose and fight corruption, particularly the institutionalised and government patronised type of corruption.