Cong, others playing fraud on people in name of welfare measures, Delhi govt's free power scheme an example: BJP

New Delhi: The BJP alleged on Thursday that the Congress and other opposition parties were playing a fraud on people by making fiscally imprudent and false promises in the name of public welfare and the AAP government's free electricity scheme in Delhi was a "classic example" of it.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters here, BJP national spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal claimed that the people of Delhi will have to pay up in future for the "free" electricity consumption today.

The reality is Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is "cheating" the people of Delhi in the name of free electricity, he alleged.

On the contrary, the BJP leader said, "we believe in empowerment and not entitlement and the difference is evident from sound current macro-economic fundamentals like GDP growth, fiscal deficit, inflation, foreign exchange reserve, etc." Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been working "relentlessly" to provide fiscally prudent and responsible social welfare schemes and expose false and fraudulent promises of the opposition parties.

Diversion of limited state resources for buying votes and for the purpose of appeasement of certain sections of society bodes ill for the country, Agarwal said.

Making false promises and resorting to financial jugglery have become routine for the opposition parties, he said.

"The people of the country should be well aware of the false promises and fraud played out by the opposition parties in the name of social welfare," he added.

"The Kejriwal government takes pride in the fact that electricity rates in Delhi have not been increased in the last eight years. But it is utterly dishonest of the AAP government to claim so because the regulatory assets of the power distribution companies have ballooned during this period," Agarwal said.

"And it's the people of Delhi who will have to pay up eventually and that too with interest that is being accrued at the rate of Rs 1,500 crore annually,” he added.

Agarwal said discoms provide electricity based on a pre-fixed rate. But if the cost of power supply is higher than the rate fixed, the difference of the amount is entered as "recoverable amount" in the companies' balance sheets.

If the government pays that amount to the discoms, it stands recovered through subsidy. If the government doesn't pay, the amount remains outstanding in the balance sheet as regulatory assets, he said.

In case of BSES Rajdhani Power Limited, the calculation of average billing rate (ABR) and average cost of supply (ACoS) shows that ACoS as per BPR (Business Plan Regulations) of 2023 is Rs 9.9 per unit whereas the ABR at current tariff is Rs 7.05 per unit, the BJP spokesperson said.

Therefore, despite continuous yearly tariff determination exercises undertaken by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC), there remains a huge unrecovered amount and becomes regulatory assets, he said.

The total difference between aggregate revenue requirement (ARR) and power purchase cost till FY 2021-22 is Rs 8,191 crore, he claimed.

The same for BSES Yamuna Power Limited is Rs 5,362 crore and for Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited Rs 5,021 crore. The total figure for FY 2021-22 comes to Rs 18,578 crore, the BJP spokesperson said.

"If we conservatively assume the carrying cost for this amount to be 8 per cent per annum, the annual interest payable to the distribution companies would come to around Rs 1,486 crore,” he said, adding, "This interest burden will be payable by the electricity consumers of Delhi." Agarwal claimed that the companies providing free electricity will recover about Rs 20,000 crore from the people of Delhi in future.

"This amount is going to increase by about Rs 5,000 crore every year. In future, the people of Delhi will have to pay for electricity at much higher prices for current consumption," he added.

The BJP leader said the AAP government has allotted Rs 3,250 crore in the budget for the year 2023-24 to discoms as subsidy for the consumers.

"That amount will go towards providing free electricity up to 200 units per connection and 50 per cent subsidy for consumption up to 400 units. And this amount is incorporated in the recovered amount. Thus the regulatory assets will not be affected by this allocation," he added.

Providing subsidised electricity and creating regulatory assets is an example of a regulatory mechanism being misused to “defraud” the people and the exchequer by the AAP government in Delhi, he charged.

"There are other issues like the Kejriwal government transferring subsidy amount to the discoms instead of transferring it to the consumers through direct benefit transfer," he said.

Transferring such big amounts to companies is "prone to corruption" and continuous refusal of the AAP government to subject discoms to audit by CAG is a concern, he added.

The BJP spokesperson alleged that the Congress and other parties are also “fooling” people through "false promises, fraud on the fiscal status of their government and financial jugglery", citing Karnataka as an example.

"In Karnataka, the Congress government is diverting funds to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore from developmental projects for their poll promises. The Karnataka deputy chief minister is on record saying that the state will have no funds for development expenditure because the funds will go to fulfil poll promises,” the BJP leader said.