Engineers Warn New Electricity Bill Will Hurt Discoms, Consumers
Demanding immediate withdrawal of the Bill, engineers warned it would devastate state Discoms, burden poor and middle‑class consumers, and favour private players.
Hyderabad:Power engineers from across the country, led by the All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) and Telangana Power Engineers Association, opposed the Electricity Amendment Bill 2025 during a video conference with Union power secretary Pankaj Agarwal. The National State Electricity Employees & Engineers Federation, Electricity Employees Federation of India (EEFI), and All India Federation of Electricity Employees (AIFEE) also raised objections.
Demanding immediate withdrawal of the Bill, engineers warned it would devastate state Discoms, burden poor and middle‑class consumers, and favour private players.
Telangana Power Engineers Association secretary general P. Sadanandam said their objections included opposition to allowing private companies multiple licences and use of existing state assets such as substations, lines, and transformers. He argued this would force Discoms to serve only remaining consumers after private firms prioritised commercial and industrial users, deepening losses.
Other concerns included enabling private firms to exploit state infrastructure for profit, complicating power purchase agreements and energy accounting, disrupting maintenance, empowering easy removal of State Regulatory Commission members, scrapping free power subsidies for poor and rural users after five years, hiking tariffs, and creating an electricity council under the Union power minister for policy dominance. They warned the Bill would accelerate privatisation harmful to consumers and jobs.
Key participants in the video conference included AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey, secretary general P. Ratnakar Rao, chief patron Padmajeet Singh, and from Telangana, chief adviser M. Shivshankar and secretary general S.D. P. Sadanandam.
