The United Democratic Front (UDF) government today rolled back the steep hike in electricity charges, announced last week, following large-scale protests and incidents of violence across the state during the last one week.
The state government had on August 28 slapped an across-the-board thermal surcharge of 50 paise per unit and also doubled the power tariff with immediate effect.
The decision was taken at the Cabinet meeting held specifically to review the increase in power tariff. Chief minister A K Antony said since everyone was against the tariff hike his government had decided to withdraw the earlier decision.
Antony had earlier said the power charge hike in the form of an across-the-board thermal surcharge of 50 paise per unit and rationalisation of domestic tariff rates was effected to overcome a deepening power crisis triggered by monsoon failure, forcing the state to rely heavily on costlier thermal power.
This year hydel power generation had to be lowered from 18 million units a day to 15 million units because of the precarious storage position in reservoirs, he had said.
Antony today said the hike was effected as there were only two options before the government, either to impose power-cut and loadshedding or increase the power tariff to meet the additional cost for buying thermal power.
The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) was already running a huge deficit of Rs 100 crore. With the state forced to rely more on thermal power, the total deficit would go up to Rs 182 crore. The hike was expected to net Rs 70 crore so as to partly offset the deficit.
"The question before the government was how far the KSEB could go on bearing such a huge loss," Antony said.
The advice given by the KSEB was that the state had no other option but to escalate the charges. The matter was also discussed in the UDF liaison committee, which, in turn, entrusted the Cabinet to take a suitable decision. The Cabinet had met at least four times before the decision was taken, he said.
Though the adverse circumstances still prevailed, the Cabinet was withdrawing the hike respecting the sentiments of all sections of people, he said. Asked whether there would be power-cut and loadshedding, Antony said these questions would be addressed later.
"We are not a martial rule. In a democracy it is not possible to ignore the public sentiment," Antony said. The steps needed to overcome the present crisis would be taken after wider consultations, he said.
The chief minister, however, took strong exception to the opposition parties unleashing extensive violence and causing damage to public property during the anti-power charge hike agitation since last week.
Not only the Opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but even partners in the ruling UDF and the "I" group loyal to Congress leader K Karunakaran had come out against one of the steepest power tariff hike of recent times.
He also said he did not consider this as a "setback" to the government.
