AIPEF claims victory as power bill referred to standing committee

Lucknow, Aug. 9 -- The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) claimed a moral victory as the Indian Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022, tabled in Lok Sabha on Monday, has been referred to the parliamentary standing committee.

The AIPEF had appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prevent the tabling of the bill in Parliament without prior consultations with all the stakeholders of the power sector.

The bill to allow non-discriminatory open access to distribution networks of power suppliers was introduced in Lok Sabha on Monday amid protests by the opposition, which claimed that it seeks to take away certain rights of state governments.

Power Minister RK Singh introduced the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 and urged Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to refer it to a parliamentary standing committee for wider consultations to address concerns raised by the opposition.

On the call of the National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers, lakhs of electricity employees and engineers across the country on Monday stopped work and staged demonstrations.

AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey said that the power workers took to the streets on Monday by boycotting work and protested against the bill tabled in Parliament "in an undemocratic manner with a view to complete privatisation of the energy sector".

Electricity employees demanded that the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 be withdrawn in its present form and if the government wanted to bring it, then it be referred to the standing committee of Parliament so that all the stakeholders, especially the common electricity consumers and power workers, got an opportunity to submit their view points.

He said that at Hyderabad, Chennai, Trivandrum, Bangalore, Vijayawada, Lucknow, Patiala, Dehradun, Shimla, Jammu, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Vadodara, Raipur, Jabalpur, Bhopal, Ranchi, Guwahati, Shillong, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, a large number of power workers stopped work and came out on the streets. Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Pioneer. For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at mailto:contentservices@htlive.com">contentservices@htlive.com