Tamil Nadu BJP leader Annamalai has urged the DMK to immediately fulfill its promise to small, micro and medium entrepreneurs.
In a statement issued by him,
Since coming to power, the DMK, which has been continuously increasing electricity tariffs and causing hardship to the public, has been issuing eye-catching announcements for publicity and deceiving the industry. Due to this, small, micro and medium entrepreneurs have been greatly affected.
In Coimbatore alone, there are about 52,367 small industries that use less than 12kw of electricity. Every year, these small industries have been greatly affected by the increase in electricity tariffs by the DMK government. Therefore, the industry associations have demanded that the electricity connection category for these small industries be changed from III (B) to III A (1). With this, the electricity tariff will come down from Rs. 9.60 to Rs. 4.65 per unit.
After repeated requests to the DMK government and several protests, on September 23, 2023, Chief Minister Stalin announced that the conversion of companies using less than 12 kW of electricity from category III-B to category III-A(1) would be considered after receiving the opinion of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission.
Following this, on September 29, 2023, the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission sent a letter to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board stating that the tariff category for small, micro and medium enterprises using less than 12 kW of electricity could be changed from category III-B to category III-A(1), and that this change would be implemented in the calculation of electricity tariffs for future periods, and that when these companies use more than 12 kW of electricity, their electricity tariff would be automatically changed to category III-B. However, even after about one and a half years since this announcement, these small, micro and medium enterprises are still being charged the increased electricity tariff.
In response to the queries raised by the industry bodies, in a letter sent on January 23, 2025, the Chief Engineer of the Coimbatore section of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Distribution Corporation stated that it is not possible to automatically transfer these 12kw electricity consuming industries to III-A(1) category, and that each industry will have to apply separately for this change by submitting the necessary documents, and that this change will come into effect only from the date of acceptance of the application for such companies.
As stated by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission on September 29, 2023, this tariff change can be considered to have come into effect only from that date. Why does the DMK government expect industrial companies to apply separately to be transferred to the lower tariff category when it can automatically transfer companies using more than 12 kW of electricity through software to the higher tariff category? Is the intention to deceive the industry by issuing announcements just for the sake of eye-catching?
The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board has been charging high tariffs from small, micro and medium enterprises with electricity loads of 12 kW and below for the last one and a half years.
Annamalai has urged the DMK government to immediately transfer all these companies using electricity loads of 12 kW and below from category III-B to category III-A(1) automatically through software, and to refund the excess tariffs collected from these companies for the last one and a half years since the announcement for this was made in September 2023.
