PATNA: Over 80 lakh power consumers in the state will have to pay almost double for the electricity consumed from April 1 as the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC) on Friday approved the tariff hike for fiscal 2017-18.Though the BERC says the average tariff hike in all categories is only 55%, the urban domestic single phase consumers will have to pay 70% to 90% more. Those who are paying Rs3.00 per unit for the first 100 units per month will have to shell out Rs5.75/unit. Likewise, the tariff for 101 to 200 units has been raised from Rs3.65/unit to Rs6.50 while for 201 to 300 units, the new rate will be Rs7.35/unit, instead of existing Rs4.35/unit. Those availing more than 300 units per month will have to pay Rs8/unit against the existing Rs5.45 per unit.In rural areas, the domestic consumers will have to pay Rs3.65 more per unit for the first 50 units (from Rs2.10 to Rs5.75) while the second slot of 51 to 100 units will cost Rs3.60 more than the existing Rs2.40/unit. Those availing more than 100 units will have to pay Rs6.25/unit against the existing Rs2.80 per unit.“The Discoms had proposed overall tariff hike of about 84% for fiscal 2017-18, whereas the commission has approved overall increase of about 55% only without taking subsidy into consideration. However, if the state government extends subsidy support to the BPL and rural consumers, as agreed under UDAY scheme, this increase may come down to around 28% only,” said BERC chairman S K Negi The only silver lining in the tariff order passed by BERC is rebate of 1% on online payment in addition to the existing rebate of 1.5% for timely payment.However, energy department principal secretary Pratyaya Amrit said the state government would decide on subsidy to BPL, rural and agriculture consumers at a meeting on Saturday. Till 2016-17, the retail tariff for the BPL families, rural domestic, rural non-domestic and agriculture consumers were subsidized to a large extent from the resource grant assistance received from the state government.“As there was no subsidy included in the tariff petition, we had returned it to the discoms for a final confirmation. However, they resent the same petition with government approval. Since, the decision on tariff is taken by the energy department and the state government, the BERC does not intervene and we have passed the order without taking subsidy into consideration,” said BERC member Rajiv Amit.The two power distribution companies (discoms) had filed the tariff petition for the next fiscal (2017-18) to BERC on December 26 last year. Sources said the two discoms filed the tariff petition without any subsidy provisions for rural, BPL and agriculture consumers.BERC officials said the commission compared the existing tariff of neighbouring states with that of Bihar while increasing the rates for 2017-18. “The Discoms had proposed overall 84% hike to bridge the gap of Rs14,000 crore in their revenue and expenditure at the existing rate. However, the commission has allowed only 55% hike, which would bridge the gap of Rs4,700 crore,” Amit said.Defending the tariff hike, energy department officials claimed that there has been no increase in power tariff in the last three years, except the marginal increase of 2.43% in 2015-16. “The consumer base of two power distribution companies has increased from 20 lakhs to 80 lakhs in the past four years. Besides, the power distribution companies are also pursuing to reduce the aggregate technical and commercial (AT & C) losses, which affect the power availability to the consumers, by 15% by 2019-20. In the last three years, the power companies have reduced the AT & C by 18-20%,” said an official.

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