Ask Tata Power to pay up, distributor tells regulator

MAHARASHTRA'S POWER MUDDLE

The state power utility, Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL), has written to the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) and asked them to direct the Tata Power Company (TPC) to pay MSEDCL Rs 80 crore for overdrawing during January and February when TPC's 500 Mw plant was in outage.

In a letter written by MSEDCL's Managing Director A B Pandey to MERC on Monday, Pandey reminded the MERC that they had made a formal request to the power regulator on March 30 to issue directions to the TPC but no orders have been issued.

The MSEDCL's letter is part of the cold war that's going on between the state power utility and MERC.

It may be recalled that around 10 days ago while turning down MSEDCL's request for extending the load-shedding hours in the state, the MERC came down heavily on MSEDCL's functioning which upset the MSEDCL's bosses at Prakash Gadgh, power utility's headquarters at Bandra.

After MERC's order which came down heavily on MSEDCL, MSEDCL shot off a sarcastic letter to MERC in the pretext of asking clarification on MERC's order. MERC subsequently replied to MSEDCL's letter on Monday.

Following this MSEDCL once again wrote a letter which indirectly puts the blame on the power regulator of overlooking MSEDCL's concerns.

The letter says that against the bill of around Rs 94 crore, TPC has paid only Rs 21 crore to the MSEDCL and it has not responded to MSEDCL's subsequent correspondence with the company.

So TPC has to pay about Rs 80 crore including the interest at the rate of 18 per cent on unpaid bills and has pointed out that this has put MSEDCL's finance under severe strain and MSEDCL has to raise costly debts from market to meet its expenditure.

In a letter, Pandey has also pointed out that MERC's consultants have also accepted MSEDCL's position that standby charges paid by TPC are to ensure power supply to Mumbai in case of a system failure and not in the case where TPC's generation set is in outage for routine repairs and maintenance work.