Steep hike in power bills affects consumers

HYDERABAD: Steep hike in electricity bills has come as a rude shock to consumers as power charges have been increased to two to three times more. After the revision of power tariff, consumers are getting new bills from May. Due to scorching summer, high utilisation of power also is leading to huge electricity bills.

After a gap of five years, the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission (TSERC) permitted Telangana State Northern Power Distribution Company Limited (TSNPDCL) and Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TSSPDCL) to increase the power tariff for 2022-23 financial year.

Both Discoms got approval to make a 14 per cent hike in electricity charges in order to make a whopping Rs 5,596 crore revenue. Low Tension (LT) domestic category tariff has been hiked from 10 paise to 50 paise per unit and Rs 1 on other categories.

For the first time, fixed charges have also been collected from consumers. Existing customer charges, electricity duty, fixed charges, additional charges and energy charges, all together lead to a huge rise in electricity bills. As a result, a few customers are witnessing around 30 per cent hike in their bills. The new tariff came into effect from April 1, 2022 and the bills pertaining to April month issued in May.

A consumer S. Prabhakar Kulaka of Madhuranagar (service number 2460 01331) paid Rs 226 for using 96 units of power in March. As per the revised tariff, he was forced to pay Rs 604 for using 128 units in April. Customer charges jumped from Rs 30 to Rs 90 and fixed charges of Rs 10, additional charges of Rs 25 and tariff difference amount of Rs 15.31 were included in the bill. Contracted load of 1.00 KW remained the same, but excess use of 32 units changed the category of LT-I (A) to LT-I-B(i), causing Prabhakar to pay two times more.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Tulasi Das, a private employee of Alwal said life turned miserable as the prices of petrol, diesel, LPG cylinder and electricity charges were increased. There was no hike in the income of people during the pandemic period, but the state and the Central governments continued to hike all the prices, he said.

“Scientific approach in price stabilisation is utterly ignored and elected representatives always concentrate on political interests,” he criticised.