Electricity Department to be converted into Corporation
CM Ibobi to meet Union Power Minister on May 6
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, May 03 2012:
Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh, who is also in charge of Power portfolio, has taken up all necessary steps to convert the Electricity Department into a Corporation.
According to an official source, during his stay in Delhi last month, Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh called in the Chief Engineer and other top officials of the Electricity Department and discussed the prospects and possibility of converting the state Electricity Department into a Corporation with a Secretary of the Union Power Ministry.
Consequent to the meeting, Chief Minister Ibobi has given strict instructions to the officials of the Electricity Department to work out necessary procedures for converting the department into a Corporation at the earliest.
On an earlier occasion, Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh had announced that the Electricity Department would be kept intact and the work for providing power to people of Imphal city would be entrusted to a private firm.
This strategy is equivalent to converting the Electricity Department into a Corporation, informed a high ranked official of the Department.
The source further informed that since a white paper on the proposed arrangement for providing electricity to the people is required to be presented, the process for converting the Electricity department into a Corporation or assigning the work to a private firm or a company may take at least three months to one year.
If at all the work for providing electricity to the public is to be assigned to a Corporation or a private Company, the state's share of electricity would have to be made known to the said Corporation or the private company.
However, the payment for purchasing electricity would be collected from the Corporation or the private company by the state government during a specific time period, the source explained.
The most important part of the whole process is whether any firm would be willing to take over the project or not.
In different developed cities of the country like Delhi and Karnataka, Corporations have taken over the work for providing electricity to the people, the source pointed out.
Meanwhile another source informed that in connection with converting the Electricity Department to a Corporation, Chief Minister O Ibobi would be visiting New Delhi on May 6 to meet Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Sindhe.
In the meeting, the Chief Minister would also press the Union Minister for assigning the work to some well-known companies like Reliance.
The source observed that the initiative has been taken up by the state government to provide 18 hours of electricity to the people of the state and to reduce at least half the monthly expenditure of Rs 10 crores spent from the state exchequer on purchasing electricity from other power corporation.