Chandigarh, December 27: In a populist decision ahead of the next year’s parliamentary and Assembly elections, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday announced to release 44,000 tubewell connections by next three months.
Addressing a press conference here, Khattar said the demand notices for about 44,000 pending tubewell connections since January 1, 2014, would be released by March 31, 2019.
He said a target had been set to issue 50,000 new solar energy connections of which tenders had been floated for 15,000 connections.
On the reports of revised tariff demanded by certain private power players from the state government on the plea of increased cost of coal, Khattar said the state government would abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court, APTEL and Central Electricity Authority in the matter.
Replying to a question, the Chief Minister said that 468-agricultural tubewells falling under Vayama Feeder of Karnal block and Saspur Feeder of Yamunanagar block would be changed into solar energy at an estimated cost of about Rs 25 crore.
He said the state government had saved a monthly payment of Rs 30 crore to Power Grid Corporation which was being charged as inter-state transmission charges from the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) project at Jhajjar.
Khattar announced to install 10 lakh smart meters in the state. Under the first phase, such meters would be installed in Karnal and Gurugram whereas the work of installing 10,000 such meters has already started in Panipat.
He said all four power companies of the state had not only emerged from the losses but have also earned profit for the first time since the inception of the state.
Now the domestic consumers with consumption up to 200 units would get power at the rate of Rs 2.50 per unit. Earlier, it was Rs 4.50 per unit up to 150 units and Rs 5.25 per unit for next 50 units. Now, the consumer would have to pay only Rs 2 per unit for monthly consumption of 50 units.
He said the state government had launched a scheme for settlement of arrears of electricity bills of defaulting domestic consumers and non-domestic consumers. Under the scheme, the arrears of the bills before 2005 had been completely waived off. So far, 8,12,157 consumers have opted for the scheme, including 3,80,917 consumers under UHBVN and 4,31,240 under DHBVN. He said that bill amounting to Rs 1952.70 crore had been settled, thus consumers had been benefited by Rs 1699.96 crore.
He said that about 30,000 to 35,000 consumers were opting for the scheme every day. The scheme was applicable up to December 31, 2018, he added.
The Chief Minister said that there were total 54,08,722 electricity connections in the state up to 2014, whereas the present state government had issued 10,87,835 new connections during the last four years.
