New Delhi:
Trying to beat the heat in the city just got tougher, not just because there's no sign of the rain. As the capital swelters with the maximum temperature hitting 43 degrees regularly, power prices have shot up. Domestic consumers will pay 24% more, commercial users will pay 19.5%.
The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) in August last year had hiked the tariff by 22 per cent hike for all categories of consumers. The tariff was hiked by 5 per cent in February and by up to 2 per cent in May to adjust the power purchase cost of the distribution companies.
Justifying demand by the private discoms to hike the tariff, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said cost of power has increased significantly in the last few years and the new rates have to take into consideration the ground realities.
Delhi has been reeling under severe outages for the last week after state-run National Hydel Power Corporation cut supply of 200MW power to BSES for failing to pay up dues of over Rs 225 crore, while another generation firm Damodar Valley Corporation has threatened to stop 280MW supply to the discom if it did not make payment of around Rs 330 crore.
Pragati Power Corporation Ltd (PPCL) and Indraprastha Power Generation Corporation Ltd (IPGCL), the two power generation companies of Delhi government, had also last week told BSES to clear their dues of around Rs 1,300 crore. These two companies supply around 330MW of power to BSES.
Citing fund crunch, Tata-backed discom TPDDL earlier this month had requested the Delhi government to help it financially by injecting a fresh equity of Rs 245 crore on the lines of similar assistance provided to BSES in January.