‘Punjab Govt should follow Bihar model in power sector’

Patiala, February 16

The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has hailed the stand of the Bihar Government that the power sector should remain in the state sector and the state government is not in favor of any kind of private participation in the energy sector. A meeting in this regard was held in Patiala where the all India body discussed the issue in detail.

“Bihar Energy Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav has written a letter to the Union Power Minister R K Singh on February 13 against the privatisation of the power sector and advocated in favor of the continuance of electricity in the state sector. The letter states that the Bihar model of improving the power sector through state Discoms should be followed everywhere in the country. The experiment of giving franchisee of power distribution in three districts of Gaya, Muzaffarpur, and Bhagalpur failed completely and even the position worsened. The franchisees did not invest a penny in infrastructure and so they were shunted out”, said VK Gupta, spokesperson, AIPEF.

He claimed that Bihar had improved tremendously on the power front and achieved its targets before the time due to the hard work of employees and all the parameters regarding per capita consumption, peak demand and number of consumers have risen manifolds in the last seven years. The transmission losses have been brought down drastically from 60 per cent to 29 per cent. — TNS