Claims to significantly cut power tariffs irrational: Pachauri

With Aam Aadmi Party and others promising to lower power tariff in Delhi, TERI chief R K Pachauri has said such pre-poll claims by parties smacked of "political expediency" and were "irrational".
"I think these statements smack of political expediency. They are trying to woo the voters by giving them these freebies and I think that it should be realised that these don't work in practice and irrational," Pachauri, Director General of The Energy and Research Institute (TERI), told PTI here.
"I think you have to run the electric utility business with proper regulation ... And run it in a responsible way. If there are sections of the society that deserve subsidy, please do that in a very transparent and in an effective way. But you do not give a blanket subsidy to everyone," Pachauri said.

While AAP has promised a 50 per cent cut in electricity tariff, Congress in its manifesto has said it would lower it to Rs 1.50 per unit for consumption up to 200 units a month as against Rs 2.80 now. BJP, however, has not made any specific mention about cutting power tariff in its vision document.
Asked specifically about AAP promising an immediate 50 per cent cut in electricity prices, he said, "they may be doing this with the best of intentions but I am sorry they ought to think twice before making such statements. This would be my advice to any party and not just AAP or anybody else."

Pachauri, who was retained as a member of the 18-member Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change when Prime Minister Narendra Modi re-constituted it last November, said "if subsidies are justified for any section of the society those have to be very targeted subsidies. It would be irrational to slash prices for everybody."
The 74-year-old was also optimistic about Indo-US collaboration in the fields of climate change and clean energy, saying India was a huge market for clean energy technologies and it could innovate and develop new technologies at much lower cost than the US.