The Center must maintain the balance of power: Government versus regulatory
Instead of intruding into state matters, the Centre must focus on aspects such as the availability of round-the-clock affordable power supply to consumers without any load-shedding.
The Ministry of Power must refrain from overstepping its jurisdiction and interfering in-state electricity matters We are well-versed of the fact that power is a Concurrent subject under the Constitution. The Electricity Act of 2003 clearly defines the functions of the government and the regulators under the various statutes of the legislation. Under the Act, all state-specific rules and reforms have to be undertaken by the state electricity regulatory commissions (SERCs) after taking into account their own state’s specificities. Unfortunately, today, the central government, by invoking Section 176 of the Electricity Act, is dictating terms on issues related to the power supply and interfering in the matters of states. This overstepping of jurisdiction by the government, I suspect, might not be tenable in the court of law.The latest example in this regard is the draft Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020 issued recently by the Ministry of Power. It proposes prescriptive rules and duties of SERCs, distribution utilities, and consumers in the matter of electricity supply such as metering, billing, connection, disconnection, reconnection, reliability of supply, etc. The draft also recognizes an emerging category of consumers known as ‘prosumers’ who would have the right to produce electricity for self-use and inject excess in the grid. Distribution utilities will have to facilitate the setting up of the renewable generation system at the prosumer’s premises and facilitate robust compliance to ensure the success of prosumers.