TPCC president urges Telangana CM to waive off electricity bills for BPL families, MSMEs

N Uttam Kumar Reddy, president of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) has written a letter to the state's Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao requesting him to waive off the electricity bills of BPL families as well as MSMEs for the entire lockdown period. In the letter, Reddy wrote that the world has been suffering due to the pandemic and Telangana was no exception.  However, he said that though global governments were changing their policies to help people, the Telangana government did not do anything.

“Every single individual, family, institute, commercial film,  private business houses, industries are still under the negative impact of lockdown,” he wrote. 

Highlighting that WHO’s 'Trace, Test and Treat norm' was not implemented state, the TPCC chief then wrote that not only the government has failed to contain the virus but also imposed a financial burden on citizens. Elaborating further, he wrote that electricity bill in June was “highly unjustified”. "The bills were not only inflated and exuberant but also prepared in an erroneous manner," he wrote. 

He added that the consumers were primarily divided into three categories based on their consumption, and tariff per unit was based on the categories. However, in violation of TSERC guidelines, the TSSPDCL had generated bills based on overall consumption done in 90 days. "Consequently, consumers have been asked to pay Rs 9 per unit instead of regular Rs 4.3 per unit due to change in a category based on a total number of units consumed in 90-day period", he added. 

Read: Telangana Has Ramped Up Testing Facilities, Working On Containment Measures: Chief Secretary

Read: Five Deaths, 1,850 New COVID-19 Cases In Telangana

Threatened consumers 

He then revealed that despite hundreds of people raising their voice against it, neither TSSPDCL nor the energy department took any measures. Instead, they threatened users to disconnect electricity if they did not pay the bill on the deadline. Owing to these problems, he asked the CM to grant a hundred per cent waiver for power bills in the lockdown for BPL families. In addition, he said that the waiver should be extended for MSME also because they did not carry any commercial activities due to lack of funds. 

"While power bills of all White Ration Cards holders should be waived off completely, the bill amount of others should be reduced appropriately, rectifying all mistakes in billing methods," he wrote. 

Read: Seven COVID-19 Deaths, 1,590 New Cases In Telangana

Read: Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao Welcomes Investment In Construction Equipment Companies

Inputs/Image credits: ANI