After desisting from taking an “unpopular” decision of allowing a hike in electricity tariff for the first six months, at last the Mamata Banerjee government is relenting.
In a recent interview to a vernacular channel the chief minister has indicated that the government is actively considering that. But, according to the state power department sources, the government’s change of stance came only after it realized that if no hike in tariff was allowed now, the state would face severe power shortage in the coming months leading to summer.
The severity of the impending power crisis might create serious discontent among a large section of people which might be politically used against the government. Led by the power minister Manish Gupta, the state power department has been lobbying hard with the chief minister’s office (CMO) for the permission to hike the electricity tariff. Also, it informed the CMO that if some corrective measures were not taken in time, the spiraling power crisis would adversely impact the coming Boro cultivation and secondary and higher secondary examinations.
According to rough estimates, if the existing power generation utilities continue to generate power at the present rate the state will face a shortfall of minimum 300 MW to maximum 1000 MW. This means that the people will have to suffer huge power cuts on regular basis throughout the state.
The Boro cultivation will begin around this time. As the farmers would be heavily dependent on ground water or river lift irrigation, for that a steady supply of electricity would be needed. Also, the school leaving examinations (Secondary Board, WB and ICSE, CBSE) will begin from mid-February, and that will be followed by Higher Secondary, ISC etc.
Now, any major disruption of power supply might cause serious discontent among the farmers and the students and parents communities. Realizing that this might go against her government, Mamata Banerjee finally decided to pay attention to the ailing power sector in the state.
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Till the last summer, the state used to neutralize the shortfall in generation by importing power from other states. Since the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in May, 2011, the government did not allow the WBPDCL, WBSEDCL and other state run power generation and distribution facilities to introduce the enhanced tariff rate as approved by the West Bengal Electricity Regulatory Commission, thus forcing them to absorb huge financial loss.
As a result of that the state run electricity generation facility WBPDCL was defaulted in its payment against the coal supply for its power plants, and Coal India started squeezing on the supply of coal to WBPDCL. Earlier, the WBPDCL used to get 17 rakes of coal, now the supply has come down to 13 rakes.
The decrease in supply of coal has severely affected the generation, While the WBPDCL used to generate on an average 2650 MW in the months of January-April, 2011, now the generation has come down several notch.
The mounting loss in the state run distribution company WBSEDCL also made it unable to mobiles additional resources to import power to make up for the short fall in electricity supply. Now, everybody in the state power sector is waiting for the green signal to come from the chief minister’s office for the much awaited hike in power tariff.