Power Meters: Congress Government Plans to Install Power Meters in Agricultural Sector | Hyderabad News

Hyderabad: Power reforms, including fixing of electric smart meters for agriculture connections, which was a flash point between the BRS and the BJP two year sago, now became an issue between the ruling Congress and the BRS. Chief minister A Revanth Reddy and former minister T Harish Rao engaged in a war of words over installing smart meters to agriculture sector in the state assembly on Saturday.
Sources in the govt said the issue of electric meters has been going on for the past two years.The BRS govt and BJP had criticised each other over the power reforms issue and installation of meters to agriculture sector. The sources recalled that former CM K Chandrasekhar Rao in various public meetings raised the issue of power reforms since early 2022 and alleged that the BJP govt was insisting on fixing meters for agriculture pumpsets, which he would not do, even if he was killed. He used this as election campaign issue in Munugode by poll in November 2022 and later in the assembly elections held last year. In almost every meeting KCR said the state was forgoing the Rs 25,000 crore additional Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM).

“KCR raised the two issues and criticised the BJP govt at the Centre. One is not procuring the paddy from the state and the other is power reforms,” officials, who worked in the Telangana Discom earlier, said. But the BRS govt sent a letter to the Centre on March 31, 2021 saying that it would not join the states that agreed to implement the power reforms and refused the additional FRBM as the assembly elections were less than two years in the state.
Former power minister G Jagadish Reddy said chief minister Revanth Reddy mislead the assembly on Saturday by clubbing the two schemes — UDAY, which was implemented in 2017 and power reforms proposed in 2021. “Even in the UDAY scheme agreement, the CM avoided the word ‘other than agriculture connections’ and secondly the proposal was to replace the smart meters in place of old existing metres, but not new meters or agriculture meters,” Jagadish Reddy said at a press conference on Sunday.
He said even finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at a press conference two years ago that the Centre could not give Rs 25,000 crore and additional FRBM as the BRS govt refused to implement it.
Meanwhile, BRS leader Harish Rao said he was talking on the UDAY scheme and Rs 9,000 crore additional burden on the state govt. “Using this opportunity (agreement), I strongly suspect the Congress govt wants to install meters for agriculture connections,” Harish Rao said.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their original owners.}