The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) in its efforts to attract various sections of the population, now focusing on the places of worships. Being a party, which had earlier introduced free power supply to agriculture pump sets in the united Andhra Pradesh, is now demanding for free power to all places of worship in the State.
TPCC Spokespersons Syed Nizamuddin in a letter to the Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao deplored that the energy department is collecting huge amounts from the places of worships like Mosques, Temples, Churches and Gurdwaras towards power consumption charges.
Shockingly, he said these places of worship are being applied the commercial tariff. Hence, the monthly billing for these religious places is amounting to several thousand and even lakhs of rupees in some cases. Consequently, the managements of most of the institutions are unable to clear the bills leading to disconnection of power supply
Citing an instance, Syed Nizamuddin said that the Secretary of Masjid Char Chaman, Jahanuma received a bill of Rs. 4,16,019. The power supply to the Masjid has been disconnected on January 30 due to non-payment of bill.
‘This is a small mosque with very little sources of revenue. It pays the salaries of Imam, Maozan and other staff with great difficulty by taking small donations from the worshippers. How this mosque can be expected to pay a whopping sum of Rs. 4.16 lakh power bill?’ he asked.
The TPCC Spokespersons said several places of worship in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and also other parts of Telangana State have very little or nil sources of revenue. Therefore, he said that the State Government should consider providing free supply of power to all places of worship, irrespective of religion. If not, a special tariff can be fixed for such places with the State Government adding subsidy component, he said.
The Congress leader also urged the government to waive off all pending power arrears of all places of worship in the State. He demanded that the TSSPDCL should be directed to immediately restore the power supply to all places of worship whose connections were disconnected due to non-payment of bills.
