KSEBOA - KSEB Officers' Association

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Private distribution companies - Reliance owned BSES Rajdhani and Yamuna - in Delhi received severe criticism from Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) for violation of terms and conditions of MOU when Delhi power sector was privatised in 2002. Although both companies were suppose to compete each other both are operating under one head and even shares customer care center. "Even the control room for BSES Yamuna and BSES Rajdhani is common. This is a violation under the electricity Act. Under the Grid code, each company is required to have a separate control room. BRPL and BYPL are registered as separate entities under the Companies Act. If there is no competition, the functioning of the discoms suffers,'' said an official.

Power distribution company BSES is yet to take action on the irregularities it has been accused of, even after receiving flak from consumers over massive loadshedding and inflated billing time and again.

The matter has not escaped the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC), which has repeatedly asked the BSES companies to engage another CEO. The regulator had in its tariff order last year directed for two CEOs, but this was not done and the direction has been repeated in the multi-year tariff (MYT) order 2009-10. According to sources, two reminders have been sent to the BSES companies to engage another CEO since the tariff order was announced in May.

"The commission has observed there were separate CEOs for BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna till last year consequent to the directions issued in 2005 and one of the CEOs has resigned from the post. The other CEO had to take additional charge as an interim arrangement. Since the two companies are separate, there will have to be two CEOs for BRPL and BYPL and this should be done urgently,'' reads DERC's tariff order issued in May this year.

However, the discom has not yet paid heed to the directions and Arun Kanchan continues to head both BSES' discoms. Experts said the two companies having a combined base of 25 lakh consumers need to be treated as separate entities. Power experts said that since Rajdhani and Yamuna were being treated as one company by Reliance Energy, there was no competition between them. "Licences have been issued to two individual entities and they should be managed differently. Just because the parent company (Reliance) is common does not mean the two BSES companies be treated as one. The staff, management, heads all need to be separate,'' said a senior official.

When the power sector was privatized in 2002, the terms and conditions of the MoU had that each company would be separate and should compete with each other to get maximum consumer satisfaction.




Source - Times of India