Centre trying to take control over autonomous Central Electricity Regulatory Commission

BJP government at the Centre never consulted the States while framing norms and it wants CERC, which is an autonomous body, to consult it before making laws and amendments

Hyderabad: Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the reins of the country in 2014, autonomous public institutions have been systematically compromised and hollowed out. The latest being the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC).

Though the CERC is a statutory body constituted under the Electricity Regulatory Commission Act 1998 and supposed to function independently, the Union Power Ministry recently issued orders directing it not to issue any guidelines without consulting the central government.

---

On May 8, Director of the Regulatory Compliance Monitoring (RCM), Power Ministry, wrote a letter to the CERC secretary asking him to consult the Ministry in detail at the stage of formulating regulations. The letter stated that in the recent past the Ministry of Power came across a number of critical issues to address which it had to issue policy directions to CERC necessitating amendments in its regulations.

“Frequent changes in regulations are not in the interest of a predictable and stable regulatory framework in the country and that the CERC was required to consult all the stakeholders including government before framing regulations,” the letter pointed out.

Interestingly, electricity is a concurrent subject and both the Parliament and the State Legislatures can make laws on the subjects included in this list. But the BJP government at the Centre never consulted the States while framing norms and it wants CERC, which is an autonomous body, to consult it before making laws and amendments. This is nothing but to dilute CERC and take control over it.

Power officials feel that as many State governments were controlling their respective Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) and not allowing increase in the electricity charges, the Discoms were sinking into losses. Hence, in the name of saving these Discoms the Center has been often issuing several orders for their privatization as part of the reforms to eliminate the interference of the State governments, the officials said.

Till CERC was allowed to act independently the Centre cannot implement its decisions, hence, the Union Power Ministry had issued orders to take power companies into their hands to make CERC non-existent and to completely defeat its objective, the officials observed, adding that many State ERCs have been complaining for long time that the Union Power Ministry was often trying to control the ERC by issuing directions.