All-party meet on free power scheme today

Willing to take one of the toughest decisions after it came to power, the state Congress government is preparing the ground to alter its politically sensitive scheme of free power to limit it to the "most deserved".

As a step towards this direction, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is holding an all-party meeting on the free power scheme, which was introduced across the farm sector not only to muster the broader consensus among the political parties but also to fix the opposition on the issue.

The government had in fact tried to debate the issue in the recently held winter session of the state Assembly, but the move was effectively thwarted by the Telugu Desam Party which extended its on-the-floor campaign on the alleged irregularities in the irrigation tenders to the last day.

Any move by the Congress government to elicit the opinion on the proposed corrective measures to the free power scheme would create a tricky situation for the main opposition party.

Though Naidu as the chief minister opposed the idea of giving free power to farmers all through his tenure, he had to change his stance once he relegated to take the mantle of opposition in the state Assembly.

At the very first instance, when the Rajasekhara Reddy government decided to act upon the problem of the mushrooming of unauthorised agricultural connections, Naidu declared that the government should implement the scheme even to the unauthorised connections.

"You came to power promising free power to the farmers. Then you should not distinguish between authorised connections and unauthorised connections as long as they are all agriculture connections," was his stated position.

When Rajasekhara Reddy hinted about the exclusion of big farmers from the free power scheme, Naidu's party was even more vociferous.

"It was the responsibility of the opposition party to ensure that the election promises of the ruling party are implemented without any modifications," Janardan Reddy, the trusted lieutenant of Chandrababu Naidu stated when the questions were raised about TDP's earlier stand on the same.

In this backdrop, the ruling party's effort would be directed not to allow the TDP to take any political mileage out of the possible changes in the free power policy. On its part, the government has already expressed its willingness to limit the scheme to the small farmers, which means excluding the corporate, big farmers.

Though the move had shown the shallowness of the ruling party, which did not apply any thought on such issues at the time of introducing the free power scheme, many sections, including the Left parties, welcomed it.

Reports suggest that, the government is even considering imposing an upper ceiling on the consumption of free power. This is likely to help the government in introducing metering to all agriculture connections, which in a way will fulfill the long pending condition of the World Bank.

The Naidu government in the past had taken loan under APL-1 to purchase and fix meters to agricultural connections and replace the old, struck ones in case of domestic services.