Bengalureans have more than one reason to sweat this summer. While the heat is getting to them on the one hand, come May and they may have to think twice about switching on the cooling in their homes and offices as it could cost them a lot more with the Bengaluru Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) and other utilities in the state pushing for a 73 paise hike in energy rates.
“We have sought a 73 paise uniform hike. It would really help if the regulatory body accepts it as then we will be able to meet the revenue deficit of 1597.70 crore,” says Bescom general manager (revenue & tariff), Shivakumar Swamy. The power utility, which has projected its annual revenue requirement as 14,393.96 crore, explains 12,805.12 crore of this amount will be spent on buying power.
That it still needs to buy power on this scale speaks for the lack of addition to the state's generation capacity that has remained stagnant for quite a while. Saving on power lost enroute to homes, industries and offices too has not made much headway either, angering industrialists, who are not looking forward to shelling out more money for use of electricty to run their units. “They have entirely failed in bringing down the losses due to theft and pilferage of power, which still hovers around 14 per cent, ” regrets Prakash N. Raikar, president, Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association(KASSIA), adding, "the crux of the whole problem is that the state government has no concrete plan for power generation. While it is ready to spend crores of public money on buying expensive power, it has not come up with anything to increase the state's generation capacity. What is more daunting is that there won’t be any additional source of power generation in the state even in the next three to four years.”
Should the government accept Bescom's proposal it could be the steepest revision in energy rates yet. In November 2009, the rates were increased by an average 30 paise per unit, in 2010 December, they went up by 22 paise per unit and the last revision, in October 2011, saw them rise by 27 paise.