power to cost more in MUMBAI -- MERC

MUMBAI: The electricity bills of over seven lakh residential power consumers in the island city of Mumbai and over 19 lakh consumers in suburban Mumbai are all set to go up from this month by 9.5% and 7.5% respectively. The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) announced new tariff cards for the city’s power distributors, the BEST Undertaking and Reliance Infrastructure on Monday. BEST supplies power to a total of 9.5 lakh consumers and Reliance to over 23 lakh consumers in suburban Mumbai. The tariffs for all other BEST consumers (except for those with temporary connections for religions functions) has been lowered. These categories include small and big commercialinstallations, industrial houses, group housing, street lighting and advertising or hoardings. The electricity regulatory commission has lowered the tariff for low-tension and high-tension commercial consumers by 8% and 14% respectively, and has increased the tariff in other categories by a nominal 1% to 4%, as for hoardings and low- and high-tension industrial users consuming the lowest units. The BEST had appealed to MERC to hike the tariff by over 52% even as Reliance had urged an 18% hike because of rising fuel costs. For BEST’s residential consumers, the charge was Rs 3.88 per unit which has been hiked to Rs 4.22/unit. BEST had wanted a Rs 5.66/ unit hike. For consumers in the commercial category, the rates have been slashed by 10% for those consuming up to 20 kilowatts (KW). For those between 20 KW to 50 KW, the rates have been cut by 17%, while for those using up to 50 KW, they have been lowered by 13%.

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