Gujarat energy minister Saurabh Patel today defended the government's decision to buy electricity from private players, claiming it to be cheaper than the electricity produced by government-owned plants.
"We never buy electricity at higher rates from corporates. The average rate of purchase remains Rs 2.91 per unit," Patel said during the Question Hour in the state Assembly.
Congress MLA Bhola Gohel had asked why the government was not purchasing cheaper electricity from the government-owned plants.
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Patel said that it was a myth that electricity from private firms was expensive. He also added that the decision was taken by Gujarat Electricity Regulation Commission (GERC) and not the state government.
"GERC gives rating to all electricity generating plants and decides accordingly. It doesn't matter whether the plant is government-owned or a private one. Since private plants come first in merit order in cost-benefit ratio, we buy electricity from them," he said.
A total of 29,253 million units had been purchased from six private players including Essar Power and Adani Power in the last one year, he said in reply to a question.
Congress had alleged that the state government was favouring private firms and deliberately shutting down its own plants.
"Let me tell you that Gujarat is buying cheapest electricity in India. Some of our plants, such as Gandhinagar and Vanakbori, are not proving feasible due to high cost of coal, gas and freight. So we don't operate them as per the orders from GERC," claimed Patel.
The minister also said that government hasn't imposed any fuel surcharge for the current year.
"As per the orders by GERC, we imposed 10 paise per unit surcharge in 2012-13 and 34 paise in 2013-14. However, BPL connections were exempted. For 2014-15, GERC has not imposed any surcharge," he said.
