Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K.S. Alagiri on Saturday said the Centre should consult the State governments before asking them to raise electricity tariff and urged Tamil Nadu government to fiercely oppose any hike in electricity charges.
In a statement, Mr. Alagiri said the Centre had asked the State governments to raise the charges for power used at night by 20%.
“Tamil Nadu government has already said that power consumption is high between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.. In this context, the Centre has suddenly announced that States have to hike the charges by 20%,” he said.
Mr. Alagiri said that this hike would burden the poor and middle class families.
“The public and businesses will not be able to handle the hike in charges. In 2017, during the AIADMK government, Tamil Nadu joined the Ujjwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana as the 21st state, which affected the State’s rights. While AIADMK claimed that ₹11,000 crore would be saved by State and then Electricity Minister said that 92% of the DISCOM’s debt would be taken over by the Centre, the debt has risen from ₹81, 312 crore in 2015 to ₹1.23 lakh crore in March 2020. This has increased the debt by over 52%,” he said.
