Energy minister informs the Assembly
Mumbai : Power tariff in Mumbai has come down compared to last years’ level although there has been a small hike in the electricity bills for consumers using air conditioners, energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule informed the Legislative Assembly through a special statement.
The minister said that conscious efforts have been made to identify various categories of the electricity consumers and classify them into several groups so that they would get maximum benefit out of the reorganisation of tariff.
“Rates for domestic consumers have been reduced by 2%, while those using air conditioners have been hiked by about 5 to 7 per cent,” the minister said.
Bawankule said that amongst various power suppliers like the Tata, BEST, RInfra and Mahavitaran, RInfra’s rates for the year 2015-16 have been reduced compared to the previous year.
“In commercial category also, rates have been slashed by 13 to 22 per cent and for the industries they have been reduced by 3 to 5 per cent. This is expected to boost the industry,” the minister said.
Power tariff for MCGM’s street lighting has been slashed by 29% while rates for schools, colleges, dispensaries and public places too have been reduced between 3 to 17 per cent, he added.
For high-tension commercial users, the rates have been reduced by 4 per cent. For the first time, public transport has been identified as a separate category and rates for mono and metro rail have been slashed by 7%, the minister said.
The minister also said that Tata Power too has reduced rates for BPL consumers by 39%, domestic consumers using less than 100 units by 22% and domestic consumers using 101-300 units by 8%. The company has also reduced rates for commercial consumers by 17% in 20-50 Kw category and by 6% for hospitals and educational institutes.
Meanwhile, fisheries minister Eknath Khadse too, in a statement, told the house that coastal security has been beefed up across the state and a new token system would be introduced to keep track of fishing boats coming in and going out of the ports across the state. Security guards too would be deployed across the coast, he added.
