Hyderabad: The Telangana Electricity Regulatory Commission (TGERC) has announced that there will be no increase in power tariffs in the first year of the Congress government in 2024. In contrast, the previous BRS government raised electricity charges multiple times during its ten-year rule, placing a financial burden of Rs 24,594 crore on the people of Telangana. The power tariffs were hiked significantly three times, with increases of 5%, 8%, and 16%.
According to government sources, the BRS government imposed a heavy burden on all communities in Telangana with these repeated electricity hikes. Opposition leaders have falsely claimed that there were no such increases during their tenure.
In 2015-16, the state’s electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs), NPDCL and SPDCL, collected Rs 18,845 crore in electricity charges from households and businesses. By the end of 2023-24, this amount had grown to Rs 43,439 crore. This means that over the ten-year period, electricity charges increased by Rs 24,594 crore.
In 2015-16, the BRS government imposed a 5% tariff hike. The following year, in 2016-17, they increased charges by another 8%. The highest hike came in 2022-23 when tariffs were raised by 16%, adding an additional burden of over Rs 6,000 crore on consumers. Before 2020, there were no fixed charges for household consumers, but the BRS government introduced and began collecting these charges.
For five years, the BRS government led people to believe that there were no further tariff increases. However, they secretly raised rates, affecting poor and middle-class families the most by charging between 50 paise to Rs 1 per unit. Fixed customer charges were also increased, despite widespread complaints from consumers. The BRS government ignored these complaints and failed to provide transparency about the financial status of the power companies, pushing DISCOMs into massive debt.
The BRS government also neglected to submit the mandatory Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) reports to the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) for several years, including 2014-15, 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22.
BRS leader KT Rama Rao had spread claims that the Congress government would impose an additional burden of Rs 18,000 crore by increasing electricity charges. However, the Congress government has not raised tariffs. Instead, they have committed to absorbing the Rs 1,200 crore tariff hike proposed by the DISCOMs, ensuring that consumers will not bear this cost.
