28 lakh consumers to benefit from power subsidy

Around 80 per cent or 28 lakh of the total consumers in the city will benefit from the power subsidy announced by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today while presenting the Delhi budget for the current fiscal.
The monthly subsidy will be Rs 1.20 per unit for consumption up to 200 units and Rs 0.80 for consumption between 201 to 400 units.
While presenting the budget for Delhi in Parliament as the city is under President's Rule, Jaitley earmarked a total of Rs 260 crore for power subsidy, conceding to a demand by his party BJP.
The announcement of power subsidy came a day after Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission hiked the tariff by up to 7.5 per cent for domestic consumers.

Though rates were increased, the regulator said the bills of consumers whose monthly consumption does not exceed 800 units a month would actually go down as Power Purchase Adjustment Cost (PPAC) surcharge of 6-8 per cent was withdrawn for next three months.
The bills of 80 per cent of the consumers are going to come down significantly when the subsidy comes into effect when the budget is cleared by Parliament.

After the subsidy is effected, the per unit rate for consumption up to 200 units will come down to Rs 2.80 instead of Rs 4 as fixed by DERC yesterday.

The per unit rate between 201 to 400 units will be Rs 5.15 as against Rs 5.95 per unit announced by DERC.
The regulator had increased per unit rate in the 0-200 slab from Rs 3.90 to Rs 4 and in the 201-400 slab, it was hiked to Rs 5.95 from 5.80.
The Sheila Dikshit government had introduced the subsidy of Rs 1 per unit for consumption between 0-200 units and 200-400 units five years back.
Keeping a pre-poll promise, AAP government had provided 50 per cent subsidy on electricity consumption of up to 400 units after coming to power. The subsidy scheme had lapsed on March 31.

Both BJP and AAP had demanded reintroduction of subsidy for the low-end consumers.