Punjab News Express/V.K.Gupta
CHANDIGARH: Northern India Power Engineers Federation (NIPEF) in its meeting held today urged power ministry to address its concerns on electricity bill and demanded that the Electricity (amendment) Bill should be modified suitably as agreed by the Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal for meaningful reforms in power sector.

The Federal Council of NIPEF held its meeting today and was attended by delegates from all the northern states.

Padamjit Singh Chief Patron All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) said that the power sector utilities are facing two basic problems of desperate financial sickness and high level of AT & C losses and government continues with the experimentation in power sector without addressing these problems. The experimentation is bound to fail if not addressed to these two problems. The average per unit revenue realized is less than the average cost of per unit supply.

Shaliender Dybey Chairman AIPEF said that Piyush Goyal Union Power Minister has agreed that provisions in the Electricity Amendment Act shall have enabling provision and not mandatory on states . No cherry picking will be allowed & all the power supply companies including private companies shall have universal power supply obligation.
State will have option to retain only government supply companies for power supply and there will be no compulsion for state to opt for private supply companies.
The time frame for states for preparing road map should be 10 years and not five years as proposed in the amendment bill for segregation of carriage & content.

V K Gupta a spokesperson of Federation said that the power distribution is of prime concern to the state governments and not to the Centre. It is not justified for Central Government to notify policies. This should be better left to the jurisdiction and authority of the concerned States as electricity is a concurrent subject under the constitution.

The Federal Council of Northern India Power Engineers Federation (NIPEF) is of firm view that the third financial bailout plan of National Democratic Alliance government under the name of UDAY may meet the same fate of earlier two financial bailout schemes in the absence of a mechanism to monitor their performances. The ruling parties in a number of states have agreed to the terms and conditions of the plan now, but this might be difficult to implement in the absence of political will. For a politician, votes are more important than reforms and state governments may still shy away from rewriting the contract on power supply and tariffs.

The Federal Council of Northern India Power Engineers Federation (NIPEF) in its meeting unanimously elected GS Bhadoria from Rajasthan as Chairman and Sanjeev Sood from Punjab as Secretary General.
RPS Sidhu (Himachal) Kartik Dubey (Uttrakhand), KK Malik (Haryana) and Satya Paul (Delhi) were elected vice chairman. Yash Pal Sharma , DC Dixit. VK Gupta and DK Jain were elected Secretary (Hq.)Secretary Organisation,Secretary Publication and Secretary Finance respectively.