Special courts, autonomy -- Govt gets serious about MSEB

Special courts, autonomy -- Govt gets serious about MSEB
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

MUMBAI, SEPT 23: The state government has at last woken up to the death-threatening crisis in the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. After months of lip service to shore up the sinking power monolith, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh held a marathon brain-storming meeting with top MSEB officials -- past and present -- and political bigwigs.

The meeting, called at NCP president Sharad Pawar's instance, was attended by Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, Energy Minister Padamsingh Patil, MSEB Chairman Yeshwant Bhave and former chairmen Madhav Godbole, Ajit Nimbalkar, P Abraham, M J Pinto and energy expert Rafiq Dulani.

The day-long meeting -- it lasted seven hours -- ended with the consensus that the time had come for the hard decisions and Pawar even suggested setting up of special courts to quickly settle disputes and recover the nearly Rs 4500 crore stuck in arrears. Another theme that emerged from the deliberations was autonomy for the MSEB.

Pawar and Deshmukh sat right through the meeting and spoke only for a few minutes each, letting the experts do the talking. Later, the two had a separate meeting with the officials of the Tata Electric Company and Bombay Suburban Electricity Supply Company.

``From the submissions made by the officials and former heads of the board, it is clear that the MSEB is passing through a critical period. Under such circumstances, it will be appropriate if the board is granted complete autonomy and laws are amended to set up special courts to speed up the recovery drive,'' Pawar said.

Deshmukh said his government would consider the proposal for granting complete autonomy to the board. ``We will take concrete steps, but at the same time, the board will have to take stringent measures to improve the situation. On occasions, it will have to take bitter decisions,'' he added.

He said the government would take into confidence the consumers and employees of the board before taking any decisions. ``The board is facing a piquant situation. Since it has huge losses, it has no funds for improvement, which again results in losses. That's why we will have win over the consumers before taking major decisions,'' he added.

Energy Minister Padamsinh Patil said the losses of the board, which stood at Rs 1641 crore in 1995, had raced to Rs 4008 crore by March 2000. ``Since our financial situation is not good, financers are reluctant to grant us loan,'' he said.

Former MSEB Chairman Madhav Godbole felt that unless the distribution of power was privatised, MSEB would continue to lose. ``The board should be granted autonomy and it should be kept free of political interfernce,'' Godbole said.

In his presentation, MSEB Chairman Yeshwant Bhave said concrete efforts would be made to cut down transmission and distribution losses by initiating improvements in systems.

The criticality of MSEB's health has been public knowledge for many years and did not need a meeting of this magnitude to discuss what was already known. But the significance of the meeting lay in the fact that the political establishment seems to have finally seen the writing the wall for the MSEB.