Panjim: The tension over the supply of electricity to the customers of Reliance Infra Ltd has now dissipated with an agreement being signed between the state government and the Goa based power consumers. The state chapter of the CII had played a pivotal role in effecting this agreement.
R-Infra has agreed to grant existing power consumers a non exclusive right to use R-Infra Infrastructure for the period upto March 31, 2015 subject to the consumer paying R-Infra a user charge @Rs 2 per /kWh of the electricity received by it from GoG through the R-Infra Infrastructure. R-Infra would be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the R-Infra infrastructure and shall attend and resolve any breakdown within a reasonable period of time.
According to the final MoU signed between Reliance Infra and the state government the consumer will take the power from Government of Goa (GoG) until GoG develops its distribution network touching the premises of the consumers company. The parties also agreed that the term of the MoU would be automatically extended for subsequent terms of six months each till GoG developed its distribution network touching the premises of the company or if the arrangement is terminated.
This agreement helped resolve some of the pressing issues that had emerged following the decision by Reliance to discontinue its operations in the state. The GoG accepted all electricity users on the Reliance grid in Goa and are now considered as “Declared Connected Consumers” from August 14, 2014 by the Electricity Department, Govt of Goa. The CII had supported the users to obtain load sanction from the GoG. The shift helped the users economically and the CII also negotiated the final MoU with R-Infra that the users will have to sign with R-Infra to put all the above actions into effect. This agreement was approved by the core group set up for this exercise.
A copy of the MoU has been sent to all the companies that used to receive its supply of electricity from Reliance. Kirit Maganlal, chairman – CII Goa State Council, Confederation of Indian Industry said that post the circulation of the MoU to all users, there came up some requests to CII asking them to intervene in sorting out individual issues of these users with R-Infra such as grant of NOCs from R-Infra to these users who had received the Load sanctions from the GoG and who wished to migrate to the GoG network.
There were other issues like the settling of past accounts with R-Infra wherein R-Infra had not yet issued them final invoices and such others.
“The CII discussed these issues with R-Infra who has assured the users that these issues will be settled by them directly with the users on an individual case basis. This is now being done and most of the contentious issues are now being resolved directly between the parties and R-Infra,” said CII president Kirit Maganlal
More than 25 parties have already signed the MoU with R-Infra and others are on the way since signatories are either on tour, holidays or awaiting the nod from their principals”.
After all the MoUs are signed by both the parties, the CII will be forwarding a copy of the same to the Electricity Department, GoG for their information.
