Shocker: BRS govt made people to cough up Rs 24,594 crore in 10 yrs

Hyderabad: While the Telangana Electricity Regulatory Commission (TGERC) declared no power tariff hike in the first year of the Congress government in 2024, the previous BRS government had imposed a burden of Rs 24,594 crore on the people of the State by increasing the electricity tariff during its ten-year tenure. The tariff has been increased substantially three times at the rate of five, eight, and 16 per cent in a 10-year period.

According to official sources, in the last ten years, the BRS government had imposed an unbearable burden on all the communities in Telangana by increasing the electricity charges. The opposition leaders were lying that they did not increase the electricity charges in Telangana during their government.

The officials said that DISCOMs in the State (NPDCL and SPDCL) collected Rs 18,845 crore through electricity charges from domestic, non-domestic, and all categories in 2015-2016. By the time the BRS government came down in 2023-24, the revenue generated by Discoms through electricity charges was Rs 43,439 crore. As per this calculation, the burden of electricity charges paid by the then government on all the communities in the last ten years was Rs 24,594 crore.

Sources said that the BRS had imposed a burden of 5 per cent in the years 2015-16. In 2016-17, the then government again increased the fares by 8 per cent. In the year 2022–23, the BRS government indiscriminately increased the charges by 16 per cent lump sum fare hike. The burden on the consumers was more than Rs 6,000 crore. There is no mention of fixed charges before 2020. The then BRS government started collecting fixed charges from household consumers.

After five years, the BRS government, which made people believe that there was no increase in fares, cheated the people by charging exorbitant fares. The previous government burdened the poor and middle class people at the rate of 50 paise to Rs one per unit without leaving any section behind. Along with these fixed customer charges were also increased. Then BRS turned a deaf ear to all the complaints from the consumers. On the other hand, the previous government destroyed the power sector by not disclosing the profit and loss of the power companies. That is why the DISCOMs in Telangana were engulfed in thousands of crores of debt.

The previous government also ignored the Annual Revenue Requirement Reports (ARR) that the DISCOMs had to submit to the ERC once a year. Due to this, the DISCOMs have not filed these reports (ARR) for the years 2014-15, 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22.

BRS leader KT Rama Rao had spread propaganda that this government would increase charges and impose a burden of Rs 18,000 crore by hiding its government management. But the Congress government did not increase the electricity charges.

The government is ready to bear the entire subsidy so that the burden of the Rs 1,200 crore fare hike proposed by the DISCOMs does not fall on the

consumers.