TDP National President and former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday strongly objected to higher current bills handed over to all sections of people and demanded that the YSR Congress Party Government waive these bills for at least 3 months in view of the Coronavirus lockdown crisis all over the state. He reminded the YSRCP of its election promise to reduce tariff. The Jaganmohan Reddy Government had lost all credibility and it was people’s misfortune to go on suffering in all aspects after having voted this party to power a year ago.
The TDP Chief appealed to the Government to revert to the old system of consumers classification into A, B and C Groups based on their yearly average consumption as it would reduce burden of increased billing on common people. The newly introduced dynamic billing based Groups classification on each month consumption led to even poor people falling into higher groups and getting abnormally higher bills.
Mr. Naidu pointed out that though the newly formed Andhra Pradesh started with Rs. 16,000 Cr deficit budget in 2014, the TDP Government did not raise power tariff nor imposed any sort of indirect burden on the people who were already hit hard by the state division. As of now, the common people were badly hit for lack of work and income during last two months while migrant labourers were facing many hardships on the way back home. In such a time, even an old woman dwelling in a hut got Rs. 3,424 latest bill as against Rs. 200 in March. A mason, who has no work for many months, got a Rs. 10,685 bill as against Rs. 150 in March. They got higher bills because they were placed in higher groups because of changed policy of this Government.
Accusing the Ministers of speaking without awareness or consideration for people, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu said that the Groups classification of consumers was broadly aimed at rationalising billing burden in accordance with rises and falls in power usage by different segments of the population. Even this perfect system was being misused in an atrocious manner and without basic commitment to the systemic procedures and guidelines in running a government. BJP leader Kanna Lakshminarayana got an unusually higher bill of Rs. 20,000 against Rs. 11,521 previously. Even TDP leader Bonda Umamaheswara Rao got a bill of over Rs. 50,000 while his previous bill was only around Rs. 9,000.
