BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission OERC ) on Monday started public hearing on the pleas of power companies on electricity tariff revision for the year of 2018-19.On the first day of the hearing, two power generation companies—Odisha Hydropower Corporation (OHPC) and Odisha Power Generation Corporation (OPGC)—kept their views before the commission. Both of these companies urged the OERC to hike power tariff.Prabhakar Mohanty, director (finance) of OHPC, said they appealed to the commission to increase power generation tariff from 85.13 paisa to 98.57 paisa per unit to meet its increased expenditure. "We have showed five major reasons including burden of seventh pay commission salary, installation of new infrastructures and interest rate," he added.OPGC also showed several reasons before the commission to increase their power generation tariff from 196.26 paisa to 226.87 paisa per unit of electricity. One of the major reasons was new reformative measures for development of OPGC, said a senior company official.Bulk power supplier Gridco will keep its view before the commission on Tuesday. Among others, power distribution companies include Nesco, Wesco, Southco and Cesu and power transmission company OPTCL will attend the hearing before it ends on February 13."Commission will hear all the requests and grievances of companies and consumer council members before taking any decision regarding the power tariff," said K L Panda, OERC secretary.Ramesh Satpathy, president of Electricity Consumers' Association, said they will urge the commission not to hike the power tariff. "We cannot buy the stories of power companies about losses and infrastructure needs. What they were doing during last 10 years? We can't pay for their mismanagement of electricity," he added.Workers of Samajwadi Party also staged dharna in front of the OERC office here requesting the commission not to consider plea of the power companies."Odisha is a power producing state. Power sector reform had been taken up by the state government 25 years ago to give uninterrupted quality power supply at cheaper rate. But now we are facing tariff hike due to lack of proper electricity management. If the commission allows the hike, we will protest it," party's state president Rabi Behera.

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