Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi protesting against the Centre’s decision to table the new Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020, in Parliament despite reservations raised by the states and urged him to refrain from proceeding with the legislature.

She requested the PM “to ensure that a broad-based and transparent dialogue on the subject is opened up at the earliest”. “I write this letter to re-lodge my protest against the Union Government’s fresh move to place the much-criticised Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020, in Parliament. It was proposed to be moved last year, but many of us had underlined the anti-people aspects of the draft legislation, and at least I had detailed out all the salient pitfalls of the Bill in a letter to you on June 12, 2020,” she wrote.

Terming the provisions of the draft Bill as “anti-people”, Miss Banerjee wrote: “I am stunned to hear that the Bill is coming back without any consideration for our reservations, and in fact with some graver anti-people features this time.” “Power is too important a sector for such unilateral interferences, especially when ‘electricity’ as a subject is in the Concurrent List of the serious prior consultation with the States,” she added.

Miss Banerjee pointed out that the Bill, which was proposed to be moved last year, was not passed because of objections by the Trinamul Congress. She reminded Mr Modi about her letter, dated June 12, 2020, in which she had
mentioned, “all the salient pitfalls” of the Bill.

She claimed that the bill aims to make the entire state electricity grid an appendage of the National Grid. Alleging that the move will result in the concentration of private profit-focused utility players in the urban industrial segments, she wrote: “The dilution of the role of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission and the State Distribution Companies imply a political design to demolish state bodies and domestic industries.”

The Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 will seek to set rules and provisions for regulatory authorities in the state and central departments of the power sector. Instead of the current system of a separate selection panel for the appointment of state electricity regulatory commissions (SERC), the Bill has proposed a National Selection Committee.

The Bill also seeks to establish an Electricity Contract Enforcement Authority to evaluate the performance of contracts in sale, purchase and transmission of power.