Telangana electricity board faces public fury at public hearing

Hyderabad: The public hearing organised by the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission on the hike of ARR and tariff proposals of Retail Supply Business opened up a Pandora's Box of issues.

While the hearing was conducted for taking on objections on the tariff proposals, many people complained about corruption in the electricity department and laxity of officials in providing basic measures like neutral lines from sub-stations to transformers.

A demand was also made by many for generating electricity bills and providing information pertaining to the electricity department on its websites in Telugu.

One P. Anjireddy said at the hearing, “In 2013, a man and his son died of electrocution in Medak district. But even though it’s nearly two years since the incident and Telangana has achieved statehood, there is no relief for the family members as they await ex-gratia from the government. For almost every task, bribes have to be paid to Electricity department officials in rural and urban centres.”

There were about 250 deaths in Telangana in just the first half of 2014-15 and 436 in 2013-14 as per the figures put forward by former MLA Kodanda Reddy.

Many people at the hearing complained about the lax attitude of officials in conducting works such as installing transformers even after getting all clearances.

Giving an example of a transformer failure in Medak, it was pointed out that TSSPDCL took more than one week to get it repaired even though the stipulated time is 48 hours.

Many representatives of farmers’ organisations took part in the hearing and raised various issues faced by farmers ranging from difficulty in getting new connections, diversion of power to cities and lack of adequate power supply for agricultural purposes.