Ministerial panel meet on Dabhol Power soon

Confederation of Indian industry's annual convention deliberations

The empowered group of ministers on Dabhol Corporation is likely to meet again, in a fortnight, to resolve the issue.

"The group has held two meetings so far and may meet again in 15 days to resolve the issue. Our effort would be to resolve it," Union power minister P M Sayeed said on the sidelines of the CII annual convention being held here.

He, however, refused to comment on the future course of action, saying that it was too early in the deliberations to make a comment.

The group had met on Tuesday, however the participants had refused to comment on the meeting. Besides Sayeed, the group includes defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, science and technology minister Kapil Sibal, law minister, HR, Bhardwaj and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Earlier, speaking at the conference, Sayeed said the revised draft of the National Electricity Policy (NEP) was ready and would be considered by Cabinet very soon. It would be notified shortly, followed by the tariff policy, he added.

On the concerns of states and others on provisions relating to issues such as cross subsidy and captive power in the Electricity Act, 2003, he said the concerns were being addressed by various policy instruments such as the NEP, tariff policy, rural electricity supply policy and others.

However, he said, "the remedy necessarily is not amendment to the Act so long as the statutory documents required under the Act take care of these concerns".

He also said that regulators had been made independent and a separate fund had been created to meet their expenses. An appellate tribunal was also being set up to hear appeals against the orders of the Central and State Regulatory Commissions.