Government should withdraw true-up charges: CPM

In an official statement on Monday, Srinivas Rao stated the CPM state committee condemns the government's move to which will be on top of the existing Rs 6,000 crore in costs, amounting to a total of Rs 17,000 crore. He said this is unacceptable as people are already struggling with rising prices of essential commodities.

Srinivas Rao noted that the discoms are yet to begin collecting the Rs 6,072-crore in true-up charges from the public but the three state-owned discoms have already issued fresh notifications to collect fuel and power purchase cost adjustment charges for the 2023-24 year.

Srinivas Rao said the discoms proposed to collect up to Rs 2.50 per unit from consumers, which is 130 per cent higher than the Rs 1.90 paid by poor households for power.

“Wrong policy decisions to purchase power at higher prices from private companies instead of sourcing power from government Genco plants and uncontrolled payments to private power companies are resulting in the government burdening the common man,” the CPM leader said.