KERC to have special sitting in city

The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) will hold a special hearing on August 22 in Bangalore on the issue of each Escom having its own power tariff in the state.

Announcing this during the hearing of objections on the petition filed before it by the Escoms for a tariff revision on August 12 in Mysore, KERC chairman K P Pandey sought the opinion of power consumers present whether they would like each power supply company to fix its own rates.

Seeing that there was a mixed reaction to his question, he made known to those present the KERC's intention to have a special hearing on the issue.

Referring to the criticism that the proposed tariff hike be an 'unjustified' additional levy on rural consumers, including small scale industries and farmers, who received three-phase power supply perhaps for just 7-9 hours in a day, the chairman also sought to know from them if they would advocate a lesser rate for industries in the rural areas.

"Why not fix different rates for rural and urban sectors?

Try to give your views if there should be different rates for rural and urban consumers at this special hearing," he said.

The remark followed when an industrialist told the three-member commission that Mysore district had 17,000 industries. But only 5 per cent of them were in urban areas.

"As the State government itself has admitted that the power supply to rural areas is limited to 3-4 hours, the rural consumers should be charged only for that period of supply," the industrialist said.

However, Chamundeswari Escom chief engineer Vijayanarasimha, in his initial presentation, attributed the loss during 2004-05 to increased hours of power supply to rural areas.

The KERC chief also announced that the commission will have its sitting in Mangalore on September 12 and September 13 for hearing objections on Mescom's tariff revision, where general representations can also be made.