Hyderabad: BRS sounds alert on Revanth’s moves in power sector

BRS MLA Jagadish Reddy said the Chief Minister had made a vain bid to mislead people claiming that the previous government had signed an agreement with the Centre to install meters to agriculture services.

Hyderabad: Coming down heavily on Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy for misleading the State Legislative Assembly and the people of the State on the issue of installation of meters to farm services, BRS MLA and former Energy Minister G Jagadish Reddy said on Sunday that the Congress government was preparing the ground to undo all the safeguards put in place by the previous BRS government to protect interests of consumers in the power sector here.

Addressing a news conference at Telangana Bhavan along with former Minister Md Mohammad Ali, Balka Suman and others, he warned that all categories of consumers including those of agriculture services that were given free supply would soon be at stake under the new regime.

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The blame game being played by the government making attempts to show consumers in the Old City in poor light was intended to hand over the services to new entities that would be cutthroat in their operations despite the fact that the best practices were in place in Telangana.

He said the Chief Minister had made a vain bid to mislead people claiming that the previous government had signed an agreement with the Centre to install meters to agriculture services. Dismissing this contention as absurd and baseless, he explained that the KCR government was not a signatory to the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) reforms under which the Centre had sought to get meters fitted to the agriculture services.

Quoting the union Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitaraman, he said installation of electricity meters was linked to State’s enhanced borrowing capabilities under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) norms.

The Central government had released additional funds to States implementing the power sector reforms which include the installation of smart electricity meters.

The State did not get the enhanced borrowing facility as it did not yield to the diktats of the Centre only because it was firm on safeguarding the interests of farmers. Revanth Reddy had deliberately read out on the floor of the house a document signed by the State under the Uday scheme introduced by the Centre in 2015 to aid the operational and financial turnaround of the power distribution companies (discoms) owned by the States, he said.