All-India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has expressed concern over the Union Power Ministry move to bring a new legislation to replace the existing Indian Electricity Act, 2003.

The AIPEF has demanded that the Central government discuss the proposed legislation with power engineers and employees before issuing the draft bill for comments of all stakeholders.

Union Minister of State for Power RK Singh had recently said that the proposed bill would have provision for ease of doing business and ensure viability of investments through assured payment mechanisms and was expected to be tabled in the winter session of Parliament.

AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey criticised the government move to privatise the power sector in one go and said that the proposal of separating carriage and content was too premature and impractical, and should not be introduced.   

“This concept was introduced in those countries which had huge surplus of generation capacity, and had developed the metering and IT systems for energy accounting,” he said.

Dubey in a statement here on Sunday said power engineers and employees across the country would have no option except to resort to agitation if the Central government went ahead unilaterally to rush through any Bill for privatisation of power supply.

India’s power sector is currently reeling under financial stress. The overall cost of electricity has increased in many parts of the country because of “must run” renewable energy projects, long-term power purchase agreements which have been signed for very high-cost power.

Dubey said the Ministry of Power must get comprehensive data and documents on franchise and privatisation experiments since 2003 and analyse them after discussions with engineers and employees and only then go ahead with the draft proposals for electricity bill, if required.

He said that there was widespread fear that the proposed bill would curb cost-effective development of the power sector.