State Electricity Board reorganised in Himachal
Staff Correspondent

‘Service conditions of the employees are protected’

SHIMLA: Despite opposition by more than 22,000 direct employees and engineers against any kind of unbundling of the State Electricity Board, the Himachal Pradesh Government on Tuesday issued a notification and vested the functions, properties, interests, rights, obligations and liabilities of the Board in the State Government under Section 131(1) of the Electricity Act, 2003, with immediate effect. An official spokesman said the Government had also constituted a Managing Committee comprising the Chairman and Members of the Board to administer the affairs till the functions and properties are re-vested in a company or companies to be incorporated as a government company or companies.

The companies in which the functions and properties would be re-vested shall be government companies and hence there is no element of privatisation of the Board.

The spokesman said it would be ensured that the service conditions of the employees are protected and pension benefits of existing and retired officials are completed secured. While preparing the scheme to re-vest the property and rights into the new government entities, the proposal of the Joint Front of Employees and Engineers of HPSEB will be examined from the legal point of view.

The spokesman said that the objective behind the reorganisation of the Electricity Board as envisaged in the Electricity Act, 2003, is to create a congenial environment of reforms in the power sector by bringing in efficiency and growth in the sector where today, apart from Electricity Boards, there are Centre and State Governments, public sector undertakings and private sector players engaged in generation, transmission, distribution and trading, and by reorganising the Board into government companies, necessary institutional framework would be available to stimulate investments and growth in a equitable manner in the sector.

Earlier the front of employees and engineers in its effort to save the Board had made an alternative draft proposal based on "Kerala model".