Power Tariff should be fair and reasonable in the city There are four distribution licensees supplying electricity

to the city of Mumbai Reliance Infrastructure-D (Rinfra-D), Tata Power co. Ltd. D (TPC-D), Brihan-Mumbai Electricity & State Transport Corporation and Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL) in remaining part. The vast difference in the tariff of different distribution licensees in Mumbai is to be brought in the fair and reasonable level are the persistent demand of the consumers at large. In this regards the sitting MLA Gopal Shetty from Boriwali constituency and Others have recently filed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Honble High Court at Judicature of Bombay. The applicable energy charges for different category of consumers with different distribution licensees in the city of Mumbai for the year 2011-12 are given in table A. Rate : Rs/Unit Categories Unit slabs R-Infra TPC-D BEST w.e.f. MSEDCL w.e.f w.e.f. june 1,2012 1 Aug 2012 LT Domestic BPL 0.40 0.40 0.56 0.76 0-100 2.96 1.05 2.61 3.36 101-300 5.56 2.50 4.84 6.05 301-500 9.16 4.40 6.80 7.92 Above 10.61 5.30 8.71 8.79 500 Non0-200 6.98 5.86 Domestics 0-20KW 301-500 7.95 8.38 501-1000 10.26 10.36 Above 10.91 1000 >20KW<50KW 10.26 4.80 10.15 8.44 >50KW 10.91 5.05 10.27 10.91 LT Industrial 0-20kw 7.76 4.50 5.06 >207.41 5.10 6.61 7.01 100KW >100KW 7.41 5.10 9.24 Temp. 3.81 2.00 4.10 3.27 religious Temp-non 15.85 11.00 11.92 15.07 religious HT I Industrial 7.56 5.00 7.49 7.01 HT 8.41 5.20 8.06 6.33 Commercial HT Group 5.16 4.10 4.31 4.82 Housing

The Comparisons shows that the tariff of RInfra-D is exorbitantly higher than that of the BEST and TPC-D. As MSEDCL distributing the power in small area of Mumbai city like Mulund, Bhandup, Vashi, Thane etc. hence excluded from the comparison. Annual revenue reports of the licensees shows that the average cost of supply Rupees per unit of all four licensees are as below: year RInfra-D TPC-D BEST MSEDCL 2010-11 6.54 5.15 6.77 4.83 2011-12 6.31 5.85 8.32 4.97 The main reason for the variation in tariff is due to the vast difference between average costs of supply of licensees. ACoS is depends upon the power purchase cost, O&M expenses and others. The power purchase cost of BEST was Rs. 5.19 per unit and that of TPC-D during the year 2011-12 was Rs. 4.54 per unit which was the lowest than PPC of other utilities. The per unit power purchase cost and O&M expenses of RInfra-D is comparatively much higher than that of other licensees. The O&M expenses of RInfra-D are Rs. 706 Crs. i.e. 70% higher than TPC-D and that of BEST is Rs. 439.21Crs as allowed by the commission. The O&M expenses of R-Infra and BEST are consistently raising over the years on the contrary TPC-D has reducing trends. The commission has allowed the recovery of the deficit of transmission division amounting to Rs. 215.68 Crs. through Electrical supply division of BEST resulting to rise in tariff. The contention for O&M expenses and overcharging is at the cost of services render to the consumers. The revenue per unit sale of other licensees are on the rising trends whereas that of RInfra-D is decreasing i.e. decrease of 6%, which is the major reasons for the widening the gap between the tariffs of the different licensees. Role of MERC: Maharashtra State electricity Regulatory commission, quasi judicial body constituted as per provision of section 82 of the Electricity Act, 2003 entrusted to discharge the functions to a) determine the tariff for generation ,supply, transmission and wheeling of electricity, wholesale , bulk or retails as the case may be , within the state b) regulate electricity purchase and procurement process of distribution licensees including the price at which electricity shall be procured c) Issue licenses to persons seeking to act as transmission licensee, distribution licensees and electricity traders with respect to their operations within the state. d) Levy fees and specify and enforce standards with respect to quality, continuity and reliability of service by licensees; etc. Till the enactment of Electricity Act-2003, the erstwhile Maharashtra state Electricity Board has the mono poly business of Generation, Transmission and distribution of Electricity in the state of Maharashtra including city of Mumbai and Bombay Electricity and Transport Corporation in some area. After enactment of the said Act R-Infra, BEST and TPC-D are supplying the power to approximately 26.50Lakhs, 9.80 lakhs and 2.17 Lakhs consumer respectively in Mumbai city.

Tariff in Various states: In most of the states are having the uniform retail tariff. In city of National Capital territory of Delhi, four distribution licensees are distributing the power at uniform tariff. In Gujarat uniformity in tariff is maintained by subsidy and reallocation of power purchase agreements where as in Orissa, Haryana and some other states the uniformity in tariff is maintained by differential bulk supply tariff and subsidies to agriculture and other consumers. The consumers in Mumbai have the right to ask, why there is wide difference in tariff of different licensees for same category of consumers in same city? Honble Supreme Court in its judgment in the case RInfra-D- Vs-TPC-D held that Tata power co. has license to supply electricity to retail consumers and TPC-D can utilize the facility of wheeling on RInfra-D network to meet its obligation of supplying power on demand to the consumers in these area. Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory commission in its recent order allows accessing the electricity to the consumers of TPC D from the networks of R-Infra. It is the land mark decision to have the consumer choice to access the electricity from the licensee of its choice and to promote the competition between the various distribution licensees supplying the power to consumers as specified in the preamble of EA 2003. Accordingly commission hereby modifies under section 94(2) of EA 2003 as under prospectively from the data of the order , consumer change over will be allowed from RInfra to TPC-D only for the residential category of the consumers who consumes electricity up to 300 units/months. This restriction of change over being restricted to the residential consumers with average electricity consumption up to 300 units months shall be inferred for the period of one year. Thus the order is the temporary injection, gets relief to the consumers who opts to transfer on the networks of TPC-D. But what about the public interest at the large? Performance of various Licencies: The performance of the distribution licensee are analyzed on the basis of the distribution losses, collection efficiency and consumer services. The distribution loss of TPC-D is within the range of 4% and that of BEST is 9.5% during year 2010-11 whereas that of RInfra-D was reduced from 10.38% to 9.05% during year 2009-10 to 2010-11. MSEDCL divisions within the periphery of the city of Mumbai shown remarkable improvement in the distribution loss reductions and rise in collection efficiency as below: MSEDCL Year 2011-12 Year 2010-11 Year 2009-10 divisions % Dist. Collection % Dist. Collection % Dist. Collection Loss efficiency Loss efficiency Loss efficiency Bhandup 6.23 101.99 7.46 101.01 10.03 99.98 urban Mulund 11.29 102.33 12.01 101.43 12.78 100.14 Thane U-I 10.44 102.92 13.73 101.46 32.47 101.47 Thane U-II 19.35 102.28 19.76 101.12 16.01 99.46

Waghale Estate Nerul Panvel washi

13.03 8.54 10.57 6.05

100.66 99.33 101.07 100.76

12.89 9.90 11.60 6.10

100.90 100.88 101.60 100.61

18.55 9.32 12.60 7.02

99.63 100.43 100.35 101.04

MSEDCL has appointed the franchisee M/s Torrent Power in the Bhivandi area who has authority to distribute the power to the consumers, recover the cost as specified to MSEDCL tariff order and provide the services thereof within the licensee area. This was the first experiments of appointing the distribution franchisee which has achieved the bench mark by successfully reducing the distribution losses from 41.85% to 17.32%, improves the collection efficiency from 68.20% to 99.02%, reduces the distribution transformers failure rate from 40% to 1.90% and improved annual technical and commercial efficiency including consumer services within period of 2006 to 2012. Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co. entrusted with the distribution of electricity in rest of Maharashtra is taking perpetual efforts for reduction of distribution losses and achieved as below: Year 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 Dist. loss 29.6 24.09 21.98 20.6 17.28 16.03 If the state owned utility like MSEDCL is consistently improving the bench mark parameters why not the private utilities? The distribution licensee who is consistently lagging in reducing distribution losses, rise in O&M expenses and on the contrary pricing high tariff to ordinary paying legal consumers in the city is against the aims and objectives of Electricity Act 2003, National Electricity Policy and Tariff policy. It is the high time to decide to the regulator to allow such licensee to exploit the consumers more or to bring the uniformity in the tariff of all licensees with same categories of consumers or to impose revocation of license in the favor of public interest? But who will bell the cat or any other thing frying in the span who knows? But till then consumers within the Jurisdiction of R-Infra have to suffer more..and I am one of them. SANJAY KHANDARE (B.E., M. Tech, LL.B) eeinfra04@hotmail.com Res: Bandra (Reclamation), Mumbai Referances: 1http://www.mercindia.org.in/pdf/Order%2058%2042/Order_Case%20No%20151%2 0of%202011.pdf 2http://www.mercindia.org.in/pdf/Order%2058%2042/Final%20Order_Case%20No.12 6%20of2011-%20RInfra-D-APR%202010-11.pdf