Electricity charges will be the same for the consumers who use 200 units or below during a month. The State Government took a decision yesterday after discussions on the issue with the State Ministers of Andhra Pradesh.

At last State Government wanted to put a stop to the opposition parties trying to corner it. All opposition parties took up the issue of the hike of electricity charges and the Congress Government is not in a position to risk its good will in view of the fast approaching general elections in 2014.   When the Chief Minister announced here there on his visits in the State that the Government will see that the poor will not get affected by the increase in the electricity tariff, opposition parties intensified their agitations on the issue taking it as indications of Government melting to the pressures. Neither the opposition parties separately nor the Government in power do not want to lose the credit of reducing electricity charges.

Power crisis thus became a power game in the State.

Yesterday the Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy took a decision a made an announcement in the conference with the media. The facts and figures announced are like this-

Out of the 6173 crores of Rupees the Government wanted to collect through electricity charges during the year 2013-14, a sum of Rs.830 crores will be borne by the State by subsidizing the power bills.

Consumers of electricity for domestic use are about 2 crores in number of connections out of which 1.86 crore consumers will be benefited by this decision of charging at old tariff to the consumers who use only 200 units or below during a month.

In case a consumer’s usage crosses the prescribed limit of 200 units, that consumer will be charged as per the new tariff for the entire usage.

But the opposition parties revealed their dissatisfaction on the Government decision demanding a reversal of the decision of implementing new electricity tariff.

AW-SriJa