Power and renewable energy minister R K Singh on Thursday expressed displeasure over poll-bound states announcing free electricity and said politicisation of the sector is ‘disastrous’. He said the states should refrain from announcing power subsidies if their budgets do not allow it.
“What is happening is the politicisation of electricity. That is going to be disastrous. If you convert electricity into goods which you are going to distribute for free and you don’t have the capacity to pay for it, the country will go into the dark. Somebody has to pay for power. If the state government doesn’t want the consumers to pay, then they have to pay from their budget. And if their budget doesn’t allow it, they have no right to declare subsidies which they can’t pay for,” he said at a CII Conference on Smart Metering.
